Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/247

 point where he lost it, Jamie discovered the reason why he had lost it. It had become obliterated by the tramping of dozens of little feet, funny little tracks, all of them the footprints of children. Blindly Jamie followed down the beach, and once he found a spot where the footprint he was searching for stood plain in the sand beside a spot where the sand verbena grew, and all around it there came again the obliterating fleet of childish footprints.

Then Jamie went home. He opened the gate and carefully closed it after him. Half the length of the steps he sat down. For the first time he brought the little bunch of flowers he held around to the range of his vision.

“Can you beat it!” said Jamie to himself. “Can you beat it? That close, and I slept! I must be more of a log than I am of a man!”

He sat staring at the delicate pinkish purple flowers that, as was their wont in the evening, were opening wide with the heat of his hand and distilling all around him the exquisitely subtle and delicate odours of their particular perfume. Once Jamie looked out toward the sea.

“Then I’m right,” he said. “She does live somewhere near here. At least, she haunts this beach. And she knew me, even with my face covered. For that matter, at a pinch I might know her form better than I do her face! But what’s the object in filling my hand with the most appealing little flowers in all the world if she hasn’t any use for me in any other way?”

Jamie thought that over carefully, and then he told the Pacific Ocean about it.