"D' you know," said Nigel at last, "as I don't know where you want me
to go to, it may be as well, after all, that you should row!"

"Very well," said Kathy, with another of her innocent smiles. "I thinked
it will be better so at first."

Nigel could not help laughing at the way she said this as he handed her
the sculls.

She soon proved herself to be a splendid boatwoman, and although her
delicate and shapely arms were as mere pipe-stems to the great brawny
limbs of her companion, yet she had a deft, mysterious way of handling
the sculls that sent the cockleshell faster over the lagoon than before.

"Now, we go ashore here," said Kathy, turning the boat,--with a prompt
back-water of the left scull, and a vigorous pull of the right
one,--into a little cove just big enough to hold it.

The keel went with such a plump on the sand, that Nigel, who sat on a
forward thwart with his back landward, reversed the natural order of
things by putting his back on the bottom of the boat and his heels in
the air.

To this day it is an unsettled question whether this was done on purpose
by Kathy. Certain it is that _she_ did not tumble, but burst into a
hearty fit of laughter, while her large lustrous eyes half shut
themselves up and twinkled.

"Why, you don't even apologise, you dreadful creature!" exclaimed