Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/114

 but when I swim, when I dive, that is all me.'

Joconda for her part did not understand.

'You are a strange creature,' she said impatiently. 'It would have been better if you had been ugly and quiet, and without that devil in you that will never let you be still. But it is no fault of yours. There are seagulls and there are barn-door fowls, and the good Lord made them both. Well, go, rake some seaweed together or any other rack of your precious sea that one can burn; we are very poor; we shall be poorer, for I get too old and you are too young.'

Joconda looked after her as the little erect figure stood out in the light against the turquoise blue of the sky and sea, and the primrose colour of the low sunlit clouds.

'She would never be a house-keeping, heaven-fearing thing,' she thought with a sigh. 'All one can hope for is that she may please some fishing lad and be an honest mother of young sea dogs. There is fierce blood in her; it will out.'

And she felt sorrowful, and as though she herself had done some sin, sitting in the stone archway of her house door with the heavy brown sail dropped across her knees.