When Davie came in, 10 minutes after I started, he was dressed in his old, still-damp shirt, with the tails tied between his legs.
“Where are your trousers, Davie?” I asked.
“I lost them at the rail, Miss.” He addressed me as if I were a school mistress, which made me feel very old.
“I had forgotten. Well, you can’t run around showing off like that – you’ll scare the seagulls. Wait here.”
Running to the captain’s cabin, I changed into my own clothes and brought back my seaman’s trousers.
“Here, put these clothes on. They’re far too big but a lot better than nothing.” I supervised, of course, rolling up the trouser legs and looping a length of line around Davie's waist to act as a makeshift belt. I smiled at the end result. “How’s that?”
He looked down at himself with a small smile. “
