Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/64

52 past and through my legs up to the knees, but I kept to both her and the ground. She did not move, one arm holding me firmly round the shoulders. I looked aside. There was a large wave just off shore coming in swiftly. Now!

The wave went back, I dashed on; stumbled over a stone; recovered myself; a small leap, a run, and we were in the light of the setting sun, and she was standing on the sand before me. The billow struck through the first ring of rocks, and burst full upon the cliff into a lit cloak-like shower of rainbow drops flying through the soft sunny air. Then I looked at her. Laughter was in her eyes, and on her lips, and in her face.

'I will never forgive you for not letting me get a ducking,' she said, 'I had set my heart on it!'

She turned, and we hurried on, not saying much. I never had felt so happy in all my life.

So we reached the garden wall, and she went up the ladder, and then I: along the path: round the bushes and out on to the lawn. There we saw Mr. Cholmeley looking through a pair of lorgnettes along the other shore.

She came up to him quietly, I following, and put her left arm round him and said:

'Here we are, daddy! I hope we haven't kept you waiting for dinner?'

'Eh? hey?' he said, smiling at her, with the lorgnettes lowered. Then, looking at me: 'Why, I thought you would be sure to go along the shore towards Gremlin, child!'

And we went over the grass together and up into the dining-room laughing and talking.

 

The fortnight I was at Seabay went like a spell of fair weather in November.

When I awoke one morning and informed myself that this was the last day I should be here with them, it seemed to me that I thought foolishly. Not even that evening, when we three were in the open air, Mr. Cholmeley in the arm-chair in the middle of the 