"Tail on there!" shouted Bill Kisseck from the lugger. "Show a leg there, if you don't want the rat's tail. D'ye hear?"
Danny was fumbling with his cap. That poor lagging lower lip was giving a yearning look to the lad's simple face. He muttered some commonplace to Mona, and then dropped his head. At that instant his eyes fell on the lower part of her dress. The blue serge of her gown was bleached near her feet. Danny, who could think of nothing else to say, mumbled something about the salt water having taken the color out of Mona's dress. The girl looked down, and then said quietly:
"Yes, I was caught by the tide last night—I mean to say, I was—"
She was clearly trying to recall her words, but poor Danny had hardly heard them.
"You cursed booby!" cried Bill Kisseck, leaping ashore, "prating with a pack of women when I'm a-waiting for you. I'll make you walk handsome over the bricks, my man."
With that he struck Danny a terrible blow and felled him.
The lad got up abashed, and without a word turned to his work. Kisseck, still in a tempest of wrath, was leaping back to the lugger, when the young woman stepped up to him, looked fearlessly in his face, seemed about to speak, checked herself, and turned away.
Kisseck stood measuring her from head to foot with his eyes, broke into a little bitter laugh, and said:
"I'm right up and down like a yard of pump-water; that's what I am."
