Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/165

 trafficking with a driver whose tariff and whose disposition you did not know: in fact, a string of minor embarrassments and expenses

But the way, this afternoon, was clear and easy; and there were no annoyances save from other walkers along the same path. The sun shone brightly at intervals. A fresh breeze swept the wide expanse streaked with purple and green and turned an occasional broken wave-crest toward the western light. Some large cumuli were aboard—white, or less white, or even darkling,—the first windy sky of autumn.

Cope and Amy passed the life-saving station, where a few people sat about idly and where one or two visitors pressed noses against glass panes to view the boats within; and they reached presently a sort of little public park which lay along the water. Here a small pier ran out past the shallows, and in front pf a shack close by it a man sat resignedly near a group of beached and upturned row-boats. One or two others were still in the water, as was a small sloop. The fellow sat there without expectations: the season was about over; the day was none too promising for such as knew. His attitude expressed, in fact, the accumulated disappointment and resignation of many months. Perhaps he was a new-comer from the interior—some region of ponds and rivers—and had kept through an uneventful summer the notion that so big a spread of water would surely be put to use. The sail of the sloop, half-lowered, flapped in the breeze, and little else stirred.

Our young people overlooked both man and boat.