“Take care! Don’t knock your head! We ought to have remembered that Boreas, or whichever it was, was hardly a sufficient introduction. Are you all right now? You had better go to sleep again till I bring something to eat. We are lying to off some little Breton fishing village, and I am going with my brother to get some provisions, and telegraph if we can.” It was long before they came back. Vera had another nap, dressed herself, grew very hungry, and came out to find Lord Rotherwood fishing, and his daughter-in-law watching for the boat to put out from the white houses with grey roofs, which, clustered round their church-tower, seemed descending to the water’s edge. They were equally famished, though Mrs. Griggs stewed up the poor remnants of last night’s banquet; but at last the little boat appeared, gaily dancing over the waves, and Phyllis making signals of success. “Oh, yes, you may be thankful, you poor starving beings! Here, Mrs. Griggs! Accept, and do all you can! Here are eggs, and some milk and fresh water, four _poulets_, such as they are, and a huge monster of a crab; but all the bread is leavened, and you little guess what Ivy and I had to go through before we were allowed to buy anything. We were had up to the Mayor, and had to _constater_ all manner of things about our ship, to prove that we were no smugglers.” “I thought the fat old rogue would have come out to visit the yacht before he would have allowed us a morsel,” said Lord Ivinghoe. “In which case you might have been found a skeleton, father, like Sir Hugh Willoughby! And as to our telegrams, they won’t go till the diligence gets to St. Malo, and what they will make of them there is another question. I did not dare to send more than one, for fear they should get mixed up.” Vera heard the joyous chaff as it fluttered round her, not half understanding it any more than if it had been a strange tongue, and not always guessing the cause of the fits of laughter, chiefly at Lord Ivinghoe’s misadventures, over which his little sister and his father were well pleased to tease his correctness, and his young wife looked a little hurt at his being tormented. He could not remember that _braconnier_ was a poacher by land, not by sea, and very unnecessarily disclaimed to the Maire being such a thing. His father, he said, “was _gentilhomme anglais en_—what’s a yacht?—_yac_. (Nonsense! that’s a long-haired ox. No!) _Non point contrabandiste_, _mais galérien dans galère_.” “And there I interposed,” said Phyllis, “for fear we should be boarded as escaped _galériens_.” “Why, galley was a pleasure-boat sometimes,” said Ivinghoe, and his wife supported him with “Cleopatra’s galley.” “Well done, Francie! To your oars for Ivy’s defence,” said Lord Rotherwood. “How did you defend us, Fly, from being towed into harbour at Brest as runaway convicts?”