Priscilla's Spies Part 3

The island of Delginish is a pleasant spot on a warm day. Above its gravel beach rises a slope of coa.r.s.e short gra.s.s, woven through with wild thyme and yellow crowtoe. Sea-pinks cl.u.s.ter on the fringe of gra.s.s and delicate groups of fairy-flax are bright-blue in stony places. Red centaury and yellow bed-straw and white bladder campion flourish. Tiny wild roses, clinging to the ground, fleck the green with spots of vivid white. The sun reaches every yard of the shadeless surface of the island. Here and there grey rocks peep up, climbed over, mellowed by olive green stonecrops. Priscilla, glowing from her bath, lay full stretch among the flowers, drawing deep breaths of scented air and gazing at the sky. But nothing was further from her mind than soulful sentimentalising over the beauties of nature. She was puzzling about the young man who had left her, endeavoring to arrive at some theory of who he was and what he could be doing in Rosnacree. After awhile she turned over on her side, fumbled in her pocket and drew out two more biscuits in crumbly fragments. She munched them contentedly.

At eleven o'clock she raised herself slowly on one elbow and looked round. The tide had nearly reached its lowest, and the Blue Wanderer lay half in, half out of the water; her stern perched high, her bow with the useless anchor rope depending from it, dipped deep. Priscilla realised that she had no time to lose. She put her shoulder to the stern of the boat and pushed, springing on board as the boat floated. The Blue Wanderer, even with her new lug sail, does not work well to windward. It is possible by very careful steering to make a little by tacking if the breeze is good and the tide is running favourably. With a light wind and in the slack water of the ebb the most that can be done is not to go to leeward. Priscilla, with the necessity of meeting a train present in her mind, unstepped the mast and took her oars. In twenty minutes she was alongside the slip where Peter Walsh stood waiting for her.

"I was talking to Joseph Anthony Kinsella," he said, "since you were out?him that lives beyond in Inishbawn."

"Were you?" said Priscilla. "I saw him in his boat as I was going out, with a big load of gravel on board. He says the baby's all right."

"It may be," said Peter. "Any way, he said nothing to the contrary when he was with me. It wasn't the baby we were speaking of. Will you mind yourself now, Miss. That slip is terribly slippery at low tide on account of the green weed that does be growing on it Take care but you might fall."

The warning came a little too late. Priscilla stepped from the boat and immediately fell forward on her hands and knees. When she rose there was a large, damp green patch on the front of her dress.

"Will you look at that, now?" said Peter. "Didn't I tell you to go easy?

Are you hurted, Miss?"

"If it wasn't the new baby you were talking about," said Priscilla, "what was it?"

"Joseph Anthony Kinsella is just after telling me that he's seen that young fellow that has Flanagan's old boat out beyond among the islands."

"Which island? I asked him, but he wouldn't tell me."

"Joseph Anthony didn't rightly know, but it's his belief that he's on Ilaunglos, or Ardilaun, or one of them to the north of Carrowbee."

"He can't be living there, then. There isn't a house on any of those islands."

"Joseph Anthony was saying that he might maybe have a tent with him and be sleeping in it the same as the tinkers would. I've heard of the like."

"Did he see the tent?"

"He did not; but there could be a tent without his seeing it. What I seen myself was the things the young fellow bought in Brannigan's and put into Flanagan's old boat. He had a can of paraffin oil with a cork drove into the neck of it, and he'd two loaves of bread done up in brown paper, and he'd a couple of tins that might be meat of one kind or another, and along with them he had a pound of tea and maybe two of sugar. I mis...o...b..ed when I saw him carrying them down the quay, but it was some kind of a picnic he was out for. Them kind of fellows has very little sense."

"I expect," said Priscilla, "that he'll be drowned before long, and then they'll find some papers on his body that'll tell us who he is. I must be off now, Peter, or I'll be late for the train."

"You're time enough, Miss. Sure them trains is never punctual."

"They are not," said Priscilla, "except on the days when you happen to be late for them. Then they make a point of being up to the minute just to score off you."

CHAPTER IV

The train, as Priscilla prophesied, was strictly punctual. It was drawn up at the platform when she leaped off her bicycle in front of the station. As she pa.s.sed through the gate she came face to face with Frank Mannix supported by the station master and the guard.

"Hullo!" she said. "You're my cousin Frank, I suppose. You look rather sick."

Frank gazed at her.

"Are you Priscilla?" he asked.

He had formed no very definite mental picture of his cousin beforehand.

Little girls of fifteen years of age are not creatures of great interest to prefects who have made remarkable catches in the long field and look forward to establis.h.i.+ng their manhood among the salmon and the grouse.

So far as he had thought of Priscilla at all he had placed her in the background, a trim, un.o.btrusive maiden, who came down to dessert after dinner and was kept under proper control at other times by a governess.

It shocked him a little to see a girl in a tousled blue cotton frock, with a green stain on the front of it, with a tangle of damp fair hair hanging round her head in s.h.i.+ning strings, with unabashed fearless eyes which looked at him with a certain shrewd merriment.

"You look wobbly," said Priscilla. "Can't you walk by yourself?"

"I've met with an accident," said Frank.

"That's all right. I was afraid just at first that you might be the sort that collapsed altogether after being seasick. Some people do, you know, and they're never much good for anything. I'm glad you're not one of them. Accidents are different of course. n.o.body can ever be quite sure of not meeting an accident."

She glanced at the stain on the front of her dress as she spoke. It was the result of an accident.

"I've sprained my ankle," said Frank.

"It's my belief," said the guard, "that the young gentleman's leg is broke on him. That's what the ticket-collector was after telling me at the junction any way."

"Would you like me to cut off your sock?" said Priscilla. "The station-master's wife would lend me a pair of scissors. She's sure to have a pair. Almost everybody has."

"No, I wouldn't," said Frank.

There had been trouble enough in getting the sock on over the damp table napkin. He had no wish to have it taken off again unnecessarily.

"All right," said Priscilla, "I won't if you'd rather not of course; but it's the proper thing to do for a sprained ankle. Sylvia Courtney told me so and she attended a course of Ambulance lectures last term and learnt all about first aid on the battle-field. I wanted to go to those lectures frightfully, but Aunt Juliet wouldn't let me. Rather rot I thought it at the time, but I saw afterwards that she couldn't possibly on account of her principles."

Frank, following Priscilla's rapid thought with difficulty, supposed that Ambulance lectures, dealing necessarily with the human body, might be considered by some people slightly unsuitable for young girls, and that Aunt Juliet was a lady who set a high value on propriety. Priscilla offered a different explanation.

"Christian Science," she said. "That's Aunt Juliet's latest. There's always something. Can you sit on a car?"

"Oh yes," said Frank. "If I was once up I could sit well enough."

"Let you make your mind easy about getting up," said the station-master.

"We'll have you on the side of the car in two twos."

They hoisted him up, Priscilla giving advice and directions while they did so. Then she took her bicycle from a porter who held it for her.

"The donkey-trap will bring your luggage," she said. "It will be all right."

She turned to the coachman.

"Drive easy now, James," she said, "and mind you don't let the cob shy when you come to the new drain that they're digging outside the court house. There's nothing worse for a broken bone than a sudden jar. That's another thing that was in the Ambulance lectures."

The car started. Priscilla rode alongside, keeping within speaking distance of Frank.

"But my ankle's not broken," he said.

"It may be. Anyhow I expect a jar is just as bad for a sprain. Very likely the lecturer said so and Sylvia Courtney forgot to tell me.

Pretty rotten luck this, for you, Cousin Frank, on account of the fis.h.i.+ng. You can't possibly fish and the river's in splendid order.