tidy and well dressed
when she goes to meet a strange cousin. She treated Miss Lentaigne's
opposition as beneath contempt.

"I must bathe," she said, "It's the first day of the hols."

"Holidays," said Miss Lentaigne.

"Sylvia Courtney," said Priscilla, "who won the prize for English
literature at school calls them 'hols.'"

"That," said Sir Lucius, "settles it. The authority of any one who wins
a first prize in English literature----"

"And besides," said Priscilla, "she said it, hols that is, to Miss
Pettigrew when she was asking when they began. _She_ didn't object."

Miss Lentaigne poured out her second cup of tea in silence. Against
Miss Pettigrew's tacit approval of the word there was no arguing. Miss
Pettigrew, the head of a great educational establishment, does more than
win, she awards prizes in English literature.

Priscilla, released from the tedium of the breakfast table, sped down
the long avenue on her bicycle. Across the handle bars was tied a
bundle, her towel and scarlet bathing dress. From the back of the
saddle, wobbling perilously, hung a much larger bundle, a new lug sail,
the fruit of hours and hours of toilsome needlework on the wet days of
the Christmas "hols."

From the gate at the end of the avenue the road runs straight and steep
into the village. At the lower end of the village is the harbour, with
its long, dilapidated quay. This is the centre of the village life. Here
are, occasionally, small coasting steamers laden with coal or flour, and
heavy brigantines or topsail schooners which have felt their way from
distant English ports round a wildly inhospitable stretch of coast.
Here, almost always, are the bluff-bowed hookers from the outer islands,
seeking cargoes of flour and yellow Indian meal, bringing in exchange
fish, dried or fresh, and sometimes turf for winter fuel. Here are
smaller boats from nearer islands which have come in on the morning tide
carrying men and women bent on marketing, which will spread brown sails
in the evening and bear their passengers home again. Here at her red
buoy lies Sir Lucius' smartly varnished pleasure boat, the _Tortoise_,
reckoned "giddy" in spite of her name by staid, cautious island folk;
but able, with her centre board and high peaked gunter lug to sail
round and round any other boat in the bay. Here, brilliantly green, lies
Priscilla's boat, the _Blue Wanderer_, a name appropriate two years ago
when she was blue, less appropriate last year