“Doctor, just come and peep into this door!  Look, millions and millions of shiny rods and wheels and things.  Oh aren’t engines the most beautiful things on earth?  Look at them—­not an inch to waste in them!  I wish I could be an engineer.”

The next minute the first bell rang to warn visitors to be getting their farewells over, and he started again, shyly and hesitatingly: 

“Marcella—­I’d be careful.”

He was frightened of women-folk unless they were ill.  He could talk to Marcella about impersonal things very interestedly, but suddenly to become fatherly was difficult.  His mouth went dry, his face flushed and he wished he had asked Aunt Janet to come with them.

She seized his arm eagerly.

“Oh look at the nice, kind little lifeboats!  They’re not much bigger than Tammas’s boat.  Doctor, if we’re wrecked isn’t it a good thing I can row and swim?  Do you think we might get wrecked?  I’d have that nice little neat boat the third along and rescue the women and children!  If the boat gets full I’ll hop out and swim—­and if sharks come along I’ll tell them what Aunt Janet said about Hoodie.  I think I’d be tough, don’t you?”

Her face clouded at mention of her aunt and Hoodie and the second bell rang out.

“Only three more minutes,” called a steward close to Marcella’s side.  “All for the shore ready, please!”

“You’ll be looking after Aunt Janet, doctor?” she said gravely.  “And Wullie?  He’ll miss me—­if you’d make it possible to call and have a few words with him at the hut when you’re passing.”

“Yes, Marcella,” said the doctor, and found his voice strangely husky.  “And look here, Marcella—­you’ll be careful?”

Her eyes were looking into his, very bright with tears as she took his hand in hers and walked towards the gangway with him.

“I couldn’t be careful if I tried,” she said, laughing, though her eyes got even more damp than ever.  “Why should I be careful?”

“You—­you might get sea-sick,” stammered the doctor despairingly.

“Oh don’t be silly!  I’m as much at home on the sea as Tammas.  Sea-sick indeed!  Whatever next?”

The third bell clanged deafeningly and the siren of the little tender hooted at the doctor’s efforts to be fatherly.

“Any more for the shore, please?” called one of the ship’s officers who stood ready to cast off, and Marcella thought he looked accusingly at the doctor.

“They’ll be taking you along, doctor,” she said.  “Oh I do wish you were coming!  Good-bye!  Good-bye.  Oh dear, I do believe I’m going to cry.”

“Good-bye, lassie,” said the doctor, taking off his glasses as he stepped on to the gangway and blinked at her.  Suddenly she thought he looked so grey and so lonely that it seemed necessary to comfort him and, before the man at the gangway could stop her, she had dashed after him, flung her arms round his neck, kissed him loudly on his ruddy cheek and ran back on deck again, all in a moment.  She was looking at the doctor as he stared at her blindly, but she was suddenly conscious of a loud and passionate “Damn!” very close to her.  She guessed, rather than realized, that she was standing on someone’s foot.