Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/141

Rh fishing boats accommodated a row of black cormorants. Surf ducks rode just outside the lazy breakers, or sprawled on the beach whence they hitched themselves awkwardly and painfully at the approach of Pearl and Kenneth. Long strings of kelp were flung in graceful festoons across the sands.

"I think the beach is elegant," said Pearl. "I just adore this salt smell."

"Salt smell!" jeered Kenneth, "rotten kelp and dead fish and things—that's what makes your 'salt sea air'!"

"I think you're just horrid!" she cried, giving him a little push.

Kenneth was full of spirits, and gambolled about like a colt. He shied pebbles at the surf ducks to see them dive; he selected flat stones and sent them skipping across the water; he found an admirable kelp skipping rope and used it with all the half-forgotten steps of his childhood. Pearl walked demurely straight ahead, duly admiring or exclaiming, but abating in no jot her air of perfect and painful propriety. It was pose that in her became a provocative quaintness. Kenneth was intrigued by it; it was outside his experience of girls. He did not know exactly what it meant. One thing, it certainly did not stand for awkwardness or embarrassment, for Pearl gave an impression of complete self-possession. Gradually a desire came to him to break through, to penetrate to the reality beneath it, whatever that might be. He began to tease her; to dash in, push her, and dash out again in avoidance of her retributive slap. He made a lasso out of kelp, and roped her—after many attempts. He caught sandcrabs and tried to scare her with them. With all this he managed to fluster her, succeeded in deepening the wild rose colour of her cheeks, even mussed up a bit her Sunday correctness of raiment. But though she protested in pretended anger, though she slapped at him when he pranced within reach not once did she lose her air of quaint, prim sedateness.

After a mile the beach was closed where the cliffs began. A picturesque pile called Gull Rock acted as the barrier. At high tide the surf, aroused slightly from its low-tide laziness, dashed over this barrier in clouds of spray. At low tide, however, there were left exposed about its fringes little inlets of bare sand, ledges streaming with the long green hair of the sea, clear pools