Betty had to make both the boats, because Tommy could not yet use his right hand. She made them out of the pieces of red bark which flaked off the pine-trunks and lay in heaps by the edge of the pool. Each boat was about six inches long and two inches wide, square about the stern and pointed in the bows, with a pine-needle mast and an envelope sail. To prevent bitterness and evil speaking, Tommy had his choice of them when they were finished. Then they were launched, and the Crevequers lay and watched them, knowing that not for a long time need they go across to the other side to welcome them to port. They made a slow voyage in the windless afternoon. There was never much wind up here, though it was up among the hills, because the pines stood close and thick about the water, shutting it in to a deep green gloom. The Crevequers lay by the water, upon the slippery brown needles, and drank in the warm resinous fragrance. It was always pleasant to step from the winding stone path, where the afternoon sun lay hot, where mule-carts climbed up and jingled their bells lazily, into this deep green shadowed place, where in the water the images of the pines nearly met from side to side, leaving a little circle of blue between. It had always been a favourite place; the Crevequers had spent much of their youth here, sailing pine-bark boats from side to side, hanging head downwards over the water with jars to catch water-beetles, bathing, or dangling an ineffectual line for fish. They had spent the morning paddling about the seashore and among the rocks in the white canoe, which leaked horribly. Now they had come up here to get dry. It was note-worthy how these weeks in Santa Caterina had left their healing touch upon both. They had been weeks of playing in the warm sunshine (there is nowhere else such sunshine, so bright and yet so gentle), of renewals of many friendships, with laughter and embraces, of rest and healing after strain of mind and body. Recuperation had begun its slow work. Tommy looked less ill, Betty less nervous and weary; laughter flickered from eyes sad and pondering, but not now, as a rule, unhappy.