The Queen's Cup, G. A. Henty [best fantasy books to read .TXT] 📗

to get the idea into her head that every man will make a good husband; and a confoundedly mistaken idea it is. She is much more likely to marry again than the woman who has had a hard time of it."

"Well, you may be right there, Colonel, but putting aside my conviction that Lady Greendale has no idea of marrying again, is the fact that at present all her thoughts are occupied by her daughter. She is not at all what you would call a managing mother, but I am sure that she has set her heart on Bertha's making a good match, and that the fear that she will succumb to some penniless younger son or other unsuitable partner is at present the dominant feeling in her mind. I don't think she would have agreed to Jack Hawley being of the party, had not Bertha entertained a conviction that he was rather gone on Miss Sinclair, who by the way has, like her sister, money enough to disregard the fact that Jack is hardly in that respect well endowed.

"However, it is time for me to be off; I see the skipper is getting the gig lowered. I suppose you will be content to sit here and smoke your pipe until we come back; and, indeed, seven is as many as the gig will carry with any degree of comfort. The cutter will go ashore to fetch off the luggage, which will probably be of somewhat portentous dimensions."

Two minutes later Mallett took his place in the gig, and was rowed to the shore. He was delighted, with his new purchase. She was an excellent sea boat, and, as he had learned from a short spin with another craft, decidedly fast. He had not, however, entered her for any race.

"There is no hurry," he said to his skipper, when the latter suggested that they should try her at Cowes. "I should like to win my first race, and in the first place we don't know that she is in her best trim. In the next place we must get the crew accustomed to each other and to the craft. I bought her as a cruiser rather than a racer, and don't want to have her full of men, as are most of the racers. It is a heavy expense, and fewer hands accustomed to work well together do just as much work, and more smartly than a crowd. We found, when we sailed round the islands with the Royal Victoria race, that, considering we went under reduced canvas, we held our own very fairly; and I have no doubt that when we get all our light canvas up, the Osprey will give a good account of herself. Our gear is scarcely stretched yet.

"No; I will wait until next season, and then we will make a bold bid for a Queen's Cup."

Frank Mallett reached the platform at Southampton a few minutes before the train came in. The party were on the lookout for him, and alighted in the highest spirits.

"Now, ladies," he said, "the first thing is to point out the luggage. My man here will get it all together, and stand guard over it till two others arrive to get it on board. They will be here in a few minutes. In fact, they ought to be here now."

He looked on with something like dismay while the boxes were picked out and piled together.

"My dear Lady Greendale," he said, "I am afraid you must all have very vague ideas as to the amount of accommodation in a 120-ton yacht. She is not a Cunarder or a P and O. Why, two or three of those trunks would absolutely fill one of her cabins."

"You did not expect, Major Mallett," Bertha said demurely, "that we were coming for a month's cruise with only handbags; especially after telling us that very likely we might not get a chance of getting any washing done all that time."

"Well, I dare say we shall stow them away somewhere. Now, as you have got them all together, we will go down to the boat.

"Now, lads, you had better get a hand cart, and get these things on board as soon as you can."

"Which is the Osprey?" Amy Sinclair asked Bertha, as they took their places in the boat.

Bertha looked with a rather puzzled face at the fleet of yachts.

"That is," she said, confidently, after a moment's hesitation, pointing to one towards which the boat was at the moment heading.

Frank Mallett laughed.

"Really I should have thought, Miss Greendale, that, although making every allowance for feminine vagueness as to boats, you would have known the yacht you christened a month ago; or, at any rate, would not have mistaken a schooner for a yawl, after the patient explanation I gave you on your last visit as to the different rigs. That is the Osprey, a hundred yards lower down."

"Oh, yes, I remember now, that when there is a little mast standing on the stern it is a yawl. These things seem very simple to you, Major Mallett, but they are very puzzling to women, who know nothing about them. Now, I venture to say, that if I were to show you six different materials for frocks, and were to tell you all their names, you would know nothing about them when I showed them to you a month afterwards.

"I suppose the gentleman on board is Colonel Severn."

"Yes, he came down by the train before yours. I thought it better that he should do so, as in the first place, he did not know any of you, and in the next, as you see, we are pretty closely packed as it is."

"What is that flag at the masthead?" Lady Greendale asked. "Bertha said that your flag was going to have an eagle on it."

"That is on my racing flag. Let me impress upon you, ladies, that a racing flag is a square flag, and that that is not a flag at all, but a burgee. Every club has its burgee; as you see, that is a white cross on a blue ground with a crown in the centre, and is the burgee of the Royal Thames, of which I was elected a member last month.

"Here we are. Properly, I ought to be on board first, but I am too wedged in. You and Wilson had better go up first; that will give more room for the ladies to move."

"You have got new steps," Bertha said. "When I came down with Mrs. Wilson to christen the boat we had to climb up nasty steep steps against the side. This is a great deal more comfortable. I was thinking that mamma would have a difficulty in getting up those other things, if it were at all rough."

"Yes, I have had them specially made for the present occasion. Large cruisers always have them, and, at any rate, they are more comfortable for any-sized boats. But they take up rather more room to stow away, and they are really not so handy in a sea, for the boats cannot get so close alongside. Still, no doubt they are more comfortable for ladies. Now it is your turn."

The cruise of the Osprey was in all respects a success. The party was well chosen and pleasant. Colonel Severn and Lady Greendale got on well together. He liked her because she had no objection whatever to his perpetual enjoyment of his pipe. She liked him because he was altogether different from anyone that she had met before; his Indian stories amused her, his views of life were original, and his grumbling at modern ways and modern innovations in no way concealed the fact that in spite of it all he evidently enjoyed life thoroughly.

The Osprey had fine weather as she ran along the south coast, anchoring under Portland for a day, while the party examined the works of the breakwater and paid a visit to the quarries, where the convicts were at work. She put into Torquay, Dartmouth and Plymouth, spending a day in the two former ports and two at the last named. They looked into Fowey, and stopped two days at Falmouth, and then, rounding the Land's End, made for Kingstown. From here they started for the Clyde; but meeting with very heavy weather, went into Belfast Lough.

The Osprey proved to be a fine sea boat, and behaved so well that even Lady Greendale declared she would not be afraid to trust herself on board her in any weather. They sailed up the Clyde as far as Greenock, and then returning, cruised for a fortnight among the islands on the west coast. They had enjoyed their stay at Kingstown so much that they put in there again on their return voyage, shaped their course for Plymouth, and then, without looking into any other port, returned to Southampton.

Jack Hawley and Miss Sinclair had become engaged during the voyage, and the Colonel and Lady Greendale had become so confidential that Frank laughingly asked him if he had changed his views on the subject of matrimony, a suggestion which he indignantly repudiated.

"I should have thought that you knew me better," he said, reproachfully. "I admit that Lady Greendale is a very charming woman, but you don't think that she can imagine for a moment that I have ever entertained any idea of such a thing? You said that I was to amuse her if I could. I have tried my best to keep the old lady as much to myself as possible, so as to enable all you young people to carry out your flirtations to your heart's content. By gad, sir, it would be a nice return for following out your instructions to find myself in such a hole as that."

Frank had some difficulty in persuading the Colonel that his remark was not meant as a serious one, and that there was no fear whatever that Lady Greendale had ever had the slightest reason to suppose that his intentions were not of a most Platonic nature.

"I am heartily glad," the Colonel said, when he was quite pacified, "that Hawley's affair has come off all right. Even if she had not been an heiress I should have said that he was a lucky fellow, for she is an extremely nice and pleasant young woman, without any nonsense about her; still there is no doubt that her fortune will come in very handy for Hawley. As to the girl herself, I think she has made a very good choice. She has plenty of money for both, and as he has managed to keep up on his younger son's portion, he can have no extravagant tastes, and will make her a very good husband. There is no other engagement to be announced, I suppose?"

"As I am the only other unmarried man on board, Colonel, your question is somewhat pointed. No; I hope there may be one of these days, but I don't think that it would be fair to ask her here, where I am her host, and she is under the glamour of the sea. I doubt whether she has the slightest idea of what I want. That is the worst of being very old friends; the relations get so fixed that a woman does not recognise that they can ever be changed. However, I shall try my luck one of these days. I don't think that I shall meet with any serious opposition on her mother's part, if Bertha likes me, but I know that Lady Greendale has very much more ambitious views for her, and has quite set her mind upon her making a good match. No doubt she has a right to expect that she will do so. However, I think she is too fond of Bertha to thwart her, however disappointed she might feel. At present I don't think that she has any more suspicion than Bertha herself of my intentions."

During the voyage Bertha and Amy Sinclair had become quite adroit helmswomen, and one or other was constantly at the tiller when the wind was light. Bertha had learned the names of all the crew, and often went forward to ask questions of the men tending the head sails, becoming a prime favourite with all hands. On arriving at Southampton the rest of the party went up at once to town, while Frank remained behind for a day or two, going round in the yacht to Gosport, where she was to be laid up for the winter.

Chapter 7.

"I am so sorry," Bertha Greendale said, "so awfully sorry. I had no idea that you thought of me like that. We were such friends so long ago, and it has been so pleasant since you came home last year, and I like you as if you were a big brother; but I have never thought of you in any other light, and now it seems dreadful to