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prompted behavior completely unlike her previous pattern. How could he? And why?
    She sat down on the wall and gazed out over the water. It didn’t make sense. One’s character could not change overnight, could it? Margaret had always accepted others’, particularly her mother’s, opinion of her. She thought of herself as a quiet, unassuming girl of no more than average gifts. Now, suddenly, it was as if the person she knew were being swept away, and she was not at all certain she liked the feeling or the new Margaret who seemed to be emerging. She sighed. One thing, at least, was unquestionably true: she disliked Sir Justin Keighley intensely and bitterly resented his intrusion into her life.
    “Excuse me, miss?” said a tentative young voice.
    Margaret looked around to find a boy of twelve or thirteen standing before her, his cloth cap in his hands. “Yes?”
    “Ma said you came down here. I’m to fetch you. The doctor’s just come.”
    “Oh.” She rose.
    “We’d ’ave been back sooner, but he was out when I got to his house.”
    “Did you go?” asked Margaret wonderingly. The boy did not seem old enough to be sent such a distance alone.
    “Yes, miss. I be Jem Appleby, you know.”
    “Mrs. Appleby’s son, yes. She told me she was sending you. But I didn’t know you were so young.”
    “I’m thirteen! In two years I shall go to sea with the fishing boats, like my brother Bob.”
    “But what about your schooling?”
    Jem looked disdainful. “I’ve finished with school. I can read and write a treat, I can.”
    Margaret gazed at him; though she had sometimes chatted with her maid, who probably came from a family like Jem’s, they had never talked of the other girl’s life. Jem Appleby was a new type for Margaret. “Do you want to go to sea?” she asked.
    The boy raised incredulous blue eyes to hers. “’Course I do. Who wouldn’t?”
    “I wouldn’t.”
    “Oh, girls.” He shrugged.
    Smiling a little, Margaret watched him as they walked back up the hill to the Red Lion. Jem was a small lad, but wiry and work-toughened. He had curly brown hair, round red cheeks, and a snub nose, and his clothes, though well kept by his mother, showed the effects of hard usage. “What do you do now?” she asked him. “Do you help at the inn?”
    He nodded without much enthusiasm. “I see to the horses.”
    “You don’t care for that?”
    “Nah. They’re stupid beasts. Are we to stop for old Mrs. Dowling? Ma told me to ask.”
    With a start, Margaret remembered their errand. “Oh, yes, I suppose we should. The doctor will want to speak to her. Where is…”
    “There,” replied Jem smugly, pointing to a cottage just up the hill from where they stood. “I came this way on purpose.”
    “Very clever. You are a good navigator.”
    He grinned, showing a generous mouthful of white teeth. “You should see me on the water. When I can get out, anyway.”
    “Do you have a boat?” queried Margaret, surprised.
    Before answering, Jem cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Mrs. Dowling, Doctor’s come.” Then he turned back and said, “It’s not much. A dinghy. But I’ve rigged her up with a sail and all. She runs before the wind well enough.”
    “I should like to see it. Does it have a name?”
    “ She’s the Gull ,” he replied, partly instructing, partly pleased by her interest. “Perhaps I’ll take you—”
    “A fine way to go on,” interrupted Mrs. Dowling, appearing in the doorway of her cottage. “Shouting in the street instead of knocking like a civilized person. I’ll be telling your mother of this, young Jemmy.”
    Jem shrugged and grimaced. “Doctor’s come,” he said again.
    “Aye. I heard you. So did everyone else in the village, I’ll be bound. Are we waiting for them?”
    “Nah.” Jem ducked his head and hurried up the hill toward the tavern. Margaret followed more slowly with Mrs. Dowling.
    “That’s a pesky lad,” complained the latter. “Mad for the sea.