The Story Of Louie Part 15

"A wonder--rotten grousing lot! They ought to have uniforms to buy, and mess-bills and clubs and things; they'd know all about it then!

Two pounds for filing a piece of iron and putting a patch on a piece of wood!--I think it will hold all right," he continued navely; "we shall make a deuce of a lot of leeway if it doesn't. We're flat-bottomed, you see, with only bilge-keels, and that reminds me; Izzard's coming back on Wednesday; I'd a note from him this morning.

But he won't be in the way, dear, if you'll only be friends----"

She could not help laughing. After all, Richenda's "grousing" was a little spoiling her fun. She turned to him again.

"I haven't seen her yet," she said. "Let's go down to her now."

He chuckled mildly. "You do play the d.i.c.kens with the Rules, Louie."

"Bother the Rules!"

"Well, you don't want to go just this minute; it's jolly here----"

This time she did not withdraw her hand.

But he was very slow, she thought, in kissing her. He had never kissed her yet. What was the good of being caught at--nothing?

Well, statues (she reflected), especially young ones, are slow----

Even as she was thinking it he did that very thing. Perhaps it was to summon up resolution to do so that he had lain awake the previous night. He kissed her cheek.

The result was curious. It was the law of her physique that most moments of perturbation only turned her paler; but at this particular form of perturbation she turned suddenly pink.

In a few moments she was as before. The first sign that she was Louie again was that she forbade him to repeat the offence. He sulked again.

"All right," he said resentfully; "then we may as well go and see the yacht."

"I don't want to see the yacht."

"Well, you needn't be stuffy about it----"

Statues _were_ distractingly slow!

Then she looked at him with a faintly mocking smile.

"Aren't you going to say you're sorry?" she challenged him (but she had for a moment a faint return of the unhabitual colour for all that).

He seemed to suspect that he was being mocked; nevertheless it was with a rather tremulous boldness that he answered "No."

"Oh!"

"You see," he explained, "you did let me hold your hand."

She caught her breath. Good gracious! Why, he would be saying presently that she had asked him to kiss her! "You see, you did let me hold your hand!" What next?

"You know you did," he argued simply.

Even so it is written, "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings----"

Suddenly she laughed. O admirable innocence, that alone can defeat guile! After all, it was too unpardonable not to be pardoned. She turned her face away again.

"You _are_ stupid!" she murmured, her face, even her neck, pink once more.

At that quite a new gleam seemed to irradiate his good-looking clay.

"I say," he said slowly, as he struggled with the newness of the idea, "you mean--do you mean?--about my not kissing you--properly?"

Oh, the heaviness! But he should kiss her "properly," as he called it, now!

"Oh," she said briskly, "it's too late now. You can't very well after that, can you?"

But he beamed. "Of course I can!"

"No, Roy!"

"I will----"

This was outrageous. She made as if to rise.

"No, Roy--no--you know very well you don't think I'm pretty----"

"Well, you aren't ugly," said he.

(Great heavens! She "wasn't ugly"!)

"Very well, Mr. Statue," she thought, compressing those irregular lips whose degree of prettiness he estimated so nicely. "I'm going to be pretty in a very few minutes, and you're going to tell me so."

"No, Roy," she said aloud; "just let's sit and talk--sensibly--I don't know what made you behave like this all of a sudden----"

And there was none to say "Provoking hussy!"

An hour later they rose. It was too late to go to the yacht now. They walked together back to the stile. Their shoulders overlapped. The kisses came easily now.

"Then we'll go aboard her to-morrow?" he said.

"Very well."

"'Once aboard the lugger'--ha, ha--but of course she's a cutter, not a lugger. That's just a saying, 'Once aboard the lugger.'"

"Really?"

"Yes, hadn't you heard it? 'Once aboard the lugger and the girl is mine,' it is. And I say, you'd better put some old clothes on if I'm to show you how the centre-board works."

"All right."

"What about Lovey?" he asked once more.