"She's thinking of the same thing," said I to myself. "What an ass I
must appear!"
However, the young lady seemed to be a trifle reassured. I noticed she
drew a sigh of relief and looked at my shoes. She looked so long that
it made me suspicious, and I also examined my shoes. They seemed to be
fairly respectable.
"I--I am sorry," she said, "but would you mind not walking on the
beach?"
This was sudden. I had intended to retire and leave the beach to her,
but I did not fancy being driven away so abruptly.
"I was about to withdraw, madam," said I, bowing stiffly; "I beg you
will pardon any inconvenience----"
"Dear me!" she cried, "you don't understand. I do not--I would
not think for a moment of asking you to leave Pine Inlet. I merely
ventured to request you to walk on the dunes. I am so afraid that your
footprints may obliterate the impressions that my father is studying."
"Oh!" said I, looking about me as though I had been caught in the
middle of a flower-bed; "really I did not notice any impressions.
Impressions of what--if I may be permitted?"
"I don't know," she said, smiling a little at my awkward pose. "If you
step this way in a straight line you can do no damage."
I did as she bade me. I suppose my movements resembled the gait of
a wet peacock. Possibly they recalled the delicate manœuvres of the
kangaroo. Anyway, she laughed.
This seriously annoyed me. I had been at a disadvantage; I walk well
enough when let alone.
"You can scarcely expect," said I, "that a man absorbed in his own
ideas could notice impressions on the sand. I trust I have obliterated
nothing."
As I said this I looked back at the long line of footprints stretching
away in prospective across the sand. They were my own. How large they
looked! Was that what she was laughing at?
"I wish to explain," she said gravely, looking at the point of her
parasol. "I am very sorry to be obliged to warn you--to ask you to
forego the pleasure of strolling on a beach that does not belong to me.
Perhaps," she continued, in sudden alarm, "perhaps this beach belongs
to you?"
"The beach? Oh, no," I said.
"But--but you were going to write poems about it?"
"Only one--and that does not necessitate owning the beach. I have
observed," said I frankly, "that the people who own nothing write many
poems about it."
She looked at me seriously.
"I write many poems," I added.
She laughed doubtfully.
"Would you rather I went away?" I asked politely.
"I? Why, no--I mean that you may do as you please--except please do not
walk on the _beach_."
"Then I do not alarm you by my presence?" I inquired. My clothes
were a bit ancient. I wore them shooting, sometimes. "My family is
respectable," I added; and I told her my name.
"Oh! Then you wrote 'Culled Cowslips' and 'Faded Fig-Leaves,' and
you imitate Maeterlinck, and you---- Oh, I know lots of people that
you know;" she cried with every symptom of relief; "and you know my
brother."
"I am the author," said I coldly, "of 'Culled Cowslips,' but 'Faded
Fig-Leaves' was an earlier work, which I no longer recognise, and I
should be grateful to you if you would be kind enough to deny that I
ever imitated Maeterlinck. Possibly," I added, "he imitates me."
"Now, do you know," she said, "I was afraid of you at first? Papa is
digging in the salt meadows nearly a mile away."
It was hard to bear.
"Can you not see," said I, "that I am wearing a shooting coat?"
"I do see--now; but it is so--so old," she pleaded.
"It is a shooting coat all the same," I said bitterly.
She was very quiet, and I saw she was sorry.
"Never mind," I said magnanimously, "you probably are not familiar with
sporting goods. If I knew your name I should ask permission to present
myself."
"Why, I am Daisy Holroyd," she said.
"What! Jack Holroyd's little sister?"
"Little!" she cried.
"I didn't mean that," said I. "You know that your brother and I were
great friends in Paris----"
"I know," she said significantly.
"Ahem! Of course," I said, "Jack and I were inseparable----"
"Except when shut in separate cells," said Miss Holroyd coldly.
This unfeeling allusion to the unfortunate termination of a
Latin-Quarter celebration hurt me.
"The police," said I, "were too officious."
"So Jack says," replied Miss Holroyd demurely.
We had unconsciously moved on along the sand hills, side by side, as we
spoke.
"To think," I repeated, "that I should meet Jack's little----"
"Please," she said, "you are only three years my senior."
She opened the sunshade and tipped it over one shoulder. It was white,
and had spots and posies on it.
"Jack sends us every new book you write," she observed. "I do not
approve of some things you write."
"Modern school," I mumbled.
"That is no excuse," she said severely; "Anthony Trollope didn't do it."
The foam spume from the breakers was drifting across the dunes, and the
little tip-up snipe ran along the beach and teetered and whistled and
spread their white-barred wings for a low, straight flight across the
shingle, only to tip and skeep and sail on again. The salt sea wind
whistled and curled through the crested waves, blowing in perfumed
puffs across thickets of sweet bay and cedar. As we passed through the
crackling juicy-stemmed marsh weed myriads of fiddler crabs raised
their fore-claws in warning and backed away, rustling, through the
reeds, aggressive, protesting.
"Like millions of pigmy Ajaxes defying the lightning," I said.
Miss Holroyd laughed.
"Now I never imagined that authors were clever except in print," she
said.
She was a most extraordinary girl.
"I suppose," she observed after a moment's silence--"I suppose I am
taking you to my father."
"Delighted!" I mumbled. "H'm! I had the honour of meeting Professor
Holroyd in Paris."
"Yes; he bailed you and Jack out," said Miss Holroyd serenely.
The silence was too painful to last.
"Captain McPeek is an interesting man," I said. I spoke more loudly
than I intended; I may have been nervous.
"Yes," said Daisy Holroyd, "but he has a most singular hotel clerk."
"You mean Mr. Frisby?"
"I do."
"Yes," I admitted, "Mr. Frisby is queer. He was once a bill-poster."
"I know it!" exclaimed Daisy Holroyd, with some heat. "He ruins
landscapes whenever he has an opportunity. Do you know that he has a
passion for bill-posting? He has; he posts bills for the pure pleasure
of it, just as you play golf, or tennis, or billiards."
"But he's a hotel clerk now," I said; "nobody employs him to post
bills."
"I know it! He does it all by himself for the pure pleasure of it. Papa
has engaged him to come down here for two weeks, and I dread it," said
the girl.
What Professor Holroyd might want of Frisby I had not the faintest
notion. I suppose Miss Holroyd noticed the bewilderment in my face, for
she laughed, and nodded her head twice.
"Not only Mr. Frisby, but Captain McPeek also," she said.
"You don't mean to say that Captain McPeek is going to close his
hotel!" I exclaimed.
My trunk was there. It contained guarantees of my respectability.
"Oh, no; his wife will keep it open," replied the girl. "Look! you can
see papa now. He's digging."
"Where?" I blurted out.
I remembered Professor Holroyd as a prim, spectacled gentleman, with
close-cut, snowy beard and a clerical allure. The man I saw digging
wore green goggles, a jersey, a battered sou'wester, and hip-boots
of rubber. He was delving in the muck of the salt meadow, his face
streaming with perspiration, his boots and jersey splashed with
unpleasant-looking mud. He glanced up as we approached, shading his
eyes with a sunburnt hand.
"Papa, dear," said Miss Holroyd, "here is Jack's friend, whom you
bailed out of Mazas."
The introduction was startling. I turned crimson with mortification.
The professor was very decent about it; he called me by name at once.
When he said this he looked at his spade. It was clear that he
considered me a nuisance and wished to go on with his digging.
"I suppose," he said, "you are still writing?"
"A little," I replied, trying not to speak sarcastically. My output had
rivaled that of "The Duchess"--in quantity, I mean.
"I seldom read--fiction," he said, looking restlessly at the hole in
the ground.
Miss Holroyd came to my rescue.
"That was a charming story you wrote last," she said. "Papa should read
it--you should, papa; it's all about a fossil."
We both looked narrowly at Miss Holroyd. Her smile was guileless.
"Fossils!" repeated the professor. "Do you care for fossils?"
"Very much," said I.
Now I am not perfectly sure what my object was in lying. I looked at
Daisy Holroyd's dark-fringed eyes. They were very grave.
"Fossils," said I, "are my hobby."