"You startled me," said Joan.
"I'm glad I didn't hurt you. I came to ask you if you'd like to fish."
"I'm reading," Joan said.
"You weren't when I saw you," said Garth, "but perhaps you meant to go on."
Joan took up the book again and opened it in the middle. There was no sound but the screaming of the herring-gulls and the slosh of the tide as it left the rock-pools. Garth took a blackfish line from the pocket of his faded blue jumper and began rewinding it very carefully.
"Sometimes there are flounders," he murmured.
The wind fluttered and rattled the pages of Joan's book so that she found reading difficult. Her broad hat flapped, also, in a most disagreeable manner, now plastering itself against her forehead, now threatening to tear itself altogether from her head. Finally a sudden gust whisked it off and sent it out to sea in a graceful arc.
"Oh, what a shame!" cried Garth. "We might go after it in the skiff. No, it's sank already! We mostly don't wear hats here. They're too much bother. I hope it wasn't a very good one."
