Ahead, thirteen-year old Johnny was moralizing.
"Perhaps we oughtn’t to take her—she’s so little."
"She’s seven," said Rob, "and what’s going to hurt her?" He kept his eyes away from the over-clouding sky.
"I don’t know—" said the cautious Johnny, "but—"
"I guess we can take care of a small girl like her. You’re thirteen and I’m eleven."
At the water edge, conscience spoke once more but was overruled when at Johnny’s question as to the judiciousness of her going, Rob declared she was afraid.
"I ain’t afraid, so there! Robby Trevelyan! My papa never said I _couldn’t_ go!"
Cary majestically slipped into the stolen boat, and seated herself in the bow. Johnny took the rudder and Rob the oars.
The boy was as much at home on the sea as he was in his bed at night. Indeed, more so, since he hated the one and loved the other with all the passionate strength of a coast-child’s heart. He had been born in inland England, but had lived most of his life in western Scotland where the great rocks rise boldly along the coast—that coast intersected by numerous sea-lochs, bounded by hills and separated from each other by mountainous peninsulas.
The burden of the deep sea’s song of eternal restlessness had become the controlling passion of the boy’s life. The wild freedom of wild living things appealed to him and fear was a word unknown. Not a nearby cliff he had not climbed; not a nearby, darkened cave, formed by the overhanging rocks, he had not explored. The Scottish folk forgot he was an English lad as his skiff became a familiar feature of the western sea-bound landscape. There was scarcely a Scottish boy of double his age who could outstrip him in swimming, and when the hated books had been laid to one side and the tutor had gone away for the summer months, old Mactier, a retainer of his father’s, had taken the child in charge, carrying him over to the moorland country and teaching him the meaning and the use of firearms. His mother had at first protested, but Trevelyan had only laughed. "Let the boy alone," he said, and he gloried with old Mactier at the lad’s stocky build, firm muscles and enduring fearlessness, knowing that in her secret heart his wife remembered the traditions of her Scottish clan, and was glad.