"Where's your waterproof, Lily?" screeched the step-mother. "Better put
it on, my dear; and I'd advise you to sit under cover, both of you.
You'll be drenched if you don't, in this wind. Why, Mr Hardacre, it's
blowing a perfect gale!"

"A bit fresh, ma'am," Bill admitted; "just enough to keep us
lively. All aboard, Mr Casey? Pass the word, sir, when you're ready."

"Ready!" called Guthrie. And then he said something to the men, Bill
Hardacre and his mate Dugald Finlayson, about having everything on
board--all his life and happiness, or something to that effect--at
which they laughed and chaffed him as the launch backed from the pier,
and started off in the tearing hurry characteristic of Customs boats.

Lily was in the cabin with the baby and the landlady's cousin, who had
'got round' Mr Hardacre to give her a return passage, after seeing the
little family safe home. Husband and wife had frowned at the suggestion
of having her with them on the launch, but when they had shut her in
out of sight and hearing, and found themselves free to follow their own
devices untrammelled by their child, they did not mind so much.

"Hadn't you better--?" Guthrie began, when his wife reappeared,
clinging to the door-jamb; but she exclaimed again:

"No, no! Let me be outside with you!" She wanted to feel "at sea" with
him, to bathe herself, under the shelter of his protection, in the
magnificent, tempestuous, inspiring night. To her, cooped up all her
life in streets and prosaic circumstances, there was something in the
present situation too poetical for words. No bride who had married
money, and was setting out by P. & O. upon her luxurious European tour,