"Thank goodness, she's not one to run after the men!" was her verdict
after the first six months of Columbine's sojourn.

That the men would have run after her had they received the smallest
encouragement to do so was a fact that not one of them would have
disputed. But with dainty pride she kept them at a distance, and none
had so far attempted to cross the invisible boundary that she had so
decidedly laid down.

And then with the summer weather had come the stranger--had come Montagu
Knight. Young, handsome, and self-assured, he strolled into The Ship one
day for tea, having tramped twelve miles along the coast from
Spearmouth, on the other side of the Point. And the next day he came
again to stay.

He had been there for nearly three weeks now, and he seemed to have
every intention of remaining. He was an artist, and the sketches he made
were numerous and--like himself--full of decision. He came and went
among the fishermen's little thatched cottages, selecting here, refusing
there, exactly according to fancy.

They had been inclined to resent his presence at first--it was certainly
no charitable impulse that moved Adam to call him "the curly-topped
chap"--but now they were getting used to him. For there was no
gainsaying the fact that he had a way with him, at least so far as the
women-folk of the community were concerned.

He could keep Mrs. Peck chuckling for an hour at a time in the evening,
when the day's work was over. And Columbine--Columbine had a trill of