CHAPTER XI
HOW GARD DREW NEARER TO HIS HEART'S DESIRE
Gard's isolation was brought home to him when he endeavoured to find
another lodging in Little Sark.
Accommodation was, of course, limited. Many of the miners had to tramp
in each day from Sark. There was still, in spite of all his tact and
efforts, somewhat of a feeling against him as a new-comer, an innovator,
a tightener of loose cords, and no one offered to change quarters to
oblige him. And so, in the end, he took Grannie's advice and found a
room in one of the thatch-roofed cottages which offered their
white-washed shoulders to the road just where it rose out of the further
side of the Coupee into Sark.
They were quiet, farmer-fisher folk who lived there, having nothing to
do with the mines and little beyond a general interest in them.
When not at work, he was thrown much upon himself, and if in his rambles
he chanced upon Bernel Hamon it was a treat, and if, as happened all too
seldom, upon Nance as well, an enjoyment beyond words.
But Nance was a busy maid, with hens and chickens, and cows and calves,
and pigs and piglets claiming her constant attention, and it was only
now and again that she could so arrange her duties as to allow of a
flight with Bernel--a flight which always took the way to the sea and
developed presently into a bathing revel wherein she flung cares and
clothes to the winds, or into a fishing excursion, in which pleasure and
profit and somewhat of pain were evenly mixed.
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