Short Story of the Day-18: "My Financial Career" by Stephen Leacock

My Financial Career by Stephen Leacock

When I go into a bank I get rattled. The clerks rattle me;
the wickets rattle me; the sight of the money rattles me;
everything rattles me.

The moment I cross the threshold of a bank and attempt to
transact business there, I become an irresponsible idiot.

I knew this beforehand, but my salary had been raised to
fifty dollars a month and I felt that the bank was the
only place for it.

So I shambled in and looked timidly round at the clerks.
I had an idea that a person about to open an account must
needs consult the manager.

I went up to a wicket marked "Accountant." The accountant
was a tall, cool devil. The very sight of him rattled me.
My voice was sepulchral.

"Can I see the manager?" I said, and added solemnly,
"alone." I don't know why I said "alone."

"Certainly," said the accountant, and fetched him.

The manager was a grave, calm man. I held my fifty-six
dollars clutched in a crumpled ball in my pocket.

"Are you the manager?" I said. God knows I didn't doubt it.

"Yes," he said.

"Can I see you," I asked, "alone?" I didn't want to say
"alone" again, but without it the thing seemed self-evident.

The manager looked at me in some alarm. He felt that I
had an awful secret to reveal.

"Come in here," he said, and led the way to a private
room. He turned the key in the lock.

"We are safe from interruption here," he said; "sit down."

We both sat down and looked at each other. I found no
voice to speak.

"You are one of Pinkerton's men, I presume," he said.

He had gathered from my mysterious manner that I was a
detective. I knew what he was thinking, and it made me
worse.

"No, not from Pinkerton's," I said, seeming to imply that
I came from a rival agency.

"To tell the truth," I went on, as if I had been prompted
to lie about it, "I am not a detective at all. I have
come to open an account. I intend to keep all my money
in this bank."

The manager looked relieved but still serious; he concluded
now that I was a son of Baron Rothschild or a young Gould.

"A large account, I suppose," he said.

"Fairly large," I whispered. "I propose to deposit
fifty-six dollars now and fifty dollars a month regularly."

The manager got up and opened the door. He called to the
accountant.

"Mr. Montgomery," he said unkindly loud, "this gentleman
is opening an account, he will deposit fifty-six dollars.
Good morning."

I rose.

A big iron door stood open at the side of the room.

"Good morning," I said, and stepped into the safe.

"Come out," said the manager coldly, and showed me the
other way.

I went up to the accountant's wicket and poked the ball
of money at him with a quick convulsive movement as if
I were doing a conjuring trick.

My face was ghastly pale.

"Here," I said, "deposit it." The tone of the words seemed
to mean, "Let us do this painful thing while the fit is
on us."

He took the money and gave it to another clerk.

He made me write the sum on a slip and sign my name in
a book. I no longer knew what I was doing. The bank swam
before my eyes.

"Is it deposited?" I asked in a hollow, vibrating voice.

"It is," said the accountant.

"Then I want to draw a cheque."

My idea was to draw out six dollars of it for present
use. Someone gave me a chequebook through a wicket and
someone else began telling me how to write it out. The
people in the bank had the impression that I was an
invalid millionaire. I wrote something on the cheque and
thrust it in at the clerk. He looked at it.

"What! are you drawing it all out again?" he asked in
surprise. Then I realized that I had written fifty-six
instead of six. I was too far gone to reason now. I had
a feeling that it was impossible to explain the thing.
All the clerks had stopped writing to look at me.

Reckless with misery, I made a plunge.

"Yes, the whole thing."

"You withdraw your money from the bank?"

"Every cent of it."

"Are you not going to deposit any more?" said the clerk,
astonished.

"Never."

An idiot hope struck me that they might think something
had insulted me while I was writing the cheque and that
I had changed my mind. I made a wretched attempt to look
like a man with a fearfully quick temper.

The clerk prepared to pay the money.

"How will you have it?" he said.

"What?"

"How will you have it?"

"Oh"--I caught his meaning and answered without even
trying to think--"in fifties."

He gave me a fifty-dollar bill.

"And the six?" he asked dryly.

"In sixes," I said.

He gave it me and I rushed out.

As the big door swung behind me I caught the echo of a
roar of laughter that went up to the ceiling of the bank.
Since then I bank no more. I keep my money in cash in my
trousers pocket and my savings in silver dollars in a
sock.

********

From the ebook, "Literary Lapses" by Stephen Leacock (Produced by Gardner Buchanan)
Courtesy: Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6340/6340.txt)

Detailed Wikipedia article on "STEPHEN LEACOCK" (with his photo):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Leacock

Grateful thanks to Gardner Buchanan, Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Short Story of the Day-17: "A Breath of the Sea"

A BREATH OF THE SEA by Ada Cambridge

Lizzie Dawson's friends sat in the drawing-room over the bank offices,
and talked about Emma. For Emma had excused herself from coming in.
"She's got one of her bad headaches," said Lizzie, "and doesn't feel up
to seeing people."

"It was the same on your last day," remarked Mrs. Dean, who suspected
"airs" on Emma's part. "She seems to be always having headaches."

"How different from what she used to be!" another lady ejaculated. "I
don't believe she ever had a thing the matter with her before she was
married."

"Different!" echoed the hostess, nearly smashing a cup with the teapot as
she banged it down. "You wouldn't know her for the same! And all through
that--that--that beast! I can't help it--it's impossible to call him
a man."

The visitors drew their chairs closer.

"Now, tell us, Lizzie--you can trust us--it won't go any further--did he
really throw her downstairs, and give her concussion of the brain?
Everybody says so, you know."

It was the champion scandalmonger of the town who asked this question,
with all her soul in her pretty, eager face.

"No, I don't think he went quite so far as that," Miss Dawson admitted,
with evident reluctance. "At any rate, Emma says he didn't. She was very
angry when somebody asked her. But then, she's so soft! Sometimes I get
really out of patience with her--standing up for him, when everybody knows
he was too bad to live with. Why, he'd have killed her if we hadn't taken
her away from him. She has been home six months, living in peace and
comfort, and even now she hasn't got over it. She's nothing but a bag of
bones, and her spirit broken--crushed"--Lizzie stopped pouring out the tea
to blow her nose savagely--"so that you wouldn't know her for what she
used to be before she fell into his hands. Brute!"

"But," urged the young matron, who was always anxious to get to the
bottom of these things, "if he did not throw her downstairs and injure
her brain, how comes she by these constant headaches? She never used to
have headaches."

"Anybody's head would ache, if they were always crying like she is,"
replied Lizzie, as gloomy as she was ungrammatical. "Though what she has
to fret for now--!"

"But he did throw the soup-plate at her, with all the hot soup in it?"

"It didn't hit her--it didn't actually touch her. He knocked it over in
one of his rages with her, all over a nice clean tablecloth just fresh
from the wash."

"What a wretch!"

"But he was quite capable of throwing it at her. I myself saw him throw a
thing at her once. It hit her in the face."

"No! did you really? What was it?"

"It was a bank-note--a five-pound note. He bought her a dress once--a
hideous thing--and gave it to her in such a way that she wouldn't accept
it as a gift. She wanted to pay him for it, and gave him the note; and he
took it and flung it in her face, using the most dreadful language. She
put up her hand to ward off the blow, and the note went flying into the
fire, and was burnt up in an instant before our eyes. As it happened,
those were the good times, when we were all well off--when five-pound
notes were more plentiful than they are now."

Lizzie sighed. The other ladies sighed. For the moment they became
indifferent to Emma Knox and her affairs. It was the beginning of
December, '92, and the depression was still deepening and deepening,
instead of getting lighter; and everybody felt it. The great financial
scandals were still in their most scandalous stage, and these little
country people had lost their little savings, or their friends and
relatives had lost theirs, through a mistaken confidence in
balance-sheets. Therefore they found a private and local scandal less
supremely interesting than it used to be. They fell to talking of their
afflicted colony, their disreputable Government, their personally altered
circumstances, the sad, sad blight that was over all. When they wanted to
cheer themselves, they returned to a discussion of the iniquities of
Emma's husband.

Meanwhile, Emma lay on the narrow bed that had been hers in the happy
years when she had no husband, glad to be out of the way of their
talk--glad, even, to be out of the way of Lizzie's talk for once, dear and
devoted as Lizzie was. It seemed to Mrs. Knox that nobody remembered she
was Mrs. Knox; they seemed to imagine that she could come back just as
she went away, and take her old place as if nothing had happened. It was
a great mistake. When you have been married--even if married miserably--you
have been spoilt for any other life. You can't be a girl again, occupied
with the trivial affairs of girlhood, if you would. You can't stand
having your father lord it over you, as if you were still nothing but his
child. It is maddening to hear people--when it is no concern of
theirs--discussing your husband, who, after all, is your husband, before
your face, and making him out to be the lowest cad on the face of the
earth. In short, the whole position is intolerable--particularly if you
are not well. Emma was not well. She had no strength, and her nerves had
gone to pieces. Her father and sister were beginning to get cross about
it, and to talk of sending for the doctor. The doctor--pooh! She knew what
would do her good better than any doctor could tell her--as she confided
to Tommy, when he came, on his return from school, to ask if her headache
was better.

Tommy was merely a rough, ugly, dirty, untidy schoolboy; but he was fond
of his sister Emma, and worried to see her so out of health and spirits.

"What is it you think would do you good?" he asked her, as he sat by her
bedside, his hat and books scattered over the floor. "If it's anything
from the shop, I'll run and get it."

"It is nothing from the shop," said Emma, drawing herself up into a
sitting posture, with unusual animation. "It is nothing that can be got
here, Tommy. It's something better than doctor's stuff--something that I
have been longing for for weeks and months past."

"I know--a letter from David," said the boy brightly.

Emma's pale young face flushed crimson, and one could see the signs of a
haughty spirit behind it. She pretended to be both surprised and angry at
this audacious suggestion. For David was the wicked husband from whose
clutches she had been rescued by an indignant family.

"David!" she exclaimed. "What are you thinking of? Why should I want a
letter from David? I have not written to him; I don't even know where he
is. He--he is nothing to me. Pray don't run away with the idea that I am
fretting about him."

"Oh!" faltered Tommy, with an abashed and disappointed air; "I didn't
know. I thought perhaps--"

"Don't think, dear boy. The less we all think on that subject, the
better--and the less we talk, too. I can't"--with a sudden change of
front--"oh, I can't bear to hear them all discussing him and abusing him
behind his back, when he can't defend himself. I do think it is so mean!"

"So do I," said the boy promptly. "But I don't do it. I never did think
he was as bad as they made out. You know you've got a bit of a temper
yourself, Emmie. Perhaps you riled him sometimes--without knowing it, you
know."

"Perhaps I did," said Mrs. Knox. "I often wonder--however, it is no use
thinking about that now. The thing is done, and it can't be helped." She
sighed; then, with an effort, roused herself. "I'll tell you what I want,
Tommy--a breath of the sea! You know how I love the sea, and what good it
always does me. I feel, if I could have just one day on it, away from all
these people--say a run down to Sorrento in the Hygeia--I should be set up
for the summer. I should begin to get strong at once. I do want to get
away for a little, Tommy--I do want to get strong." Her voice quivered.

"Then, why don't you go?" he asked her.

"If only for a couple of days!" she ejaculated longingly. "Even one
day--one sight of the sea--one breath of it--would make a new creature of
me. I know it would. Of course, it is expensive, and I haven't much
money, and I won't ask father now--now that I am married; but just a
couple of days would not cost much, would it? I could go second-class,
for that matter."

"You wouldn't go alone, would you?"

"I don't want to. It's lonely enough at the best of times; I don't want
to make it worse. But I would not like to drag Lizzie away; I'd rather
not do that. I was thinking--you haven't got examinations next week, have
you?"

"Not till the week after," the boy replied, breathless with delighted
anticipation. "Oh, I say! you don't mean you would take me?"

"You could look after me very well," said Mrs. Knox, who, unfortunately
for one in her position, had no vocation for independence. "I want
somebody, and yet I don't want to be bothered. Suppose you and I go
together--shall we? It wouldn't put you off your examinations?"

"Not the least little bit," he assured her fervently. "If you stew up to
the last moment, your head only gets muddled. It is far better to try and
forget everything for a few days--freshens the brain, you know--puts you
regularly into form."

"I believe it is the best plan," she said, when she had thought it over.
"Then we'll do it, Tommy."

"Good egg!" he cried in rapture. This was the correct form of expression
with schoolboys at that date.

Lizzie, when she came to hear of the projected enterprise, was
dissatisfied with it.

"I should have thought," she remarked, "that the sea, and Sorrento
particularly, would have been the last place you'd wish to go to." And
she said so because it was near the sea that Emma had lived her
disastrous married life, and at Sorrento that she had spent the honeymoon
which began it. Emma assured her that, on the contrary, the sea was the
first and only thing she longed for; and it seemed like pure perversity
to Lizzie's mind. Lizzie then declared that she must go too, to take
charge of her sister, who was not strong enough to travel alone. She
ridiculed the idea of Tommy as a protector, to his great wrath. "That
child!" she called him.

"He is fourteen, and he is devoted to me," protested Emma. "He is all the
protector I want, and I have promised him, Lizzie. And of course father
cannot do without you. It is only for a couple of days."

"A couple of days is not long enough to do you any good; and then
suppose--just suppose you were to come across that man?"

"Well? What if I did?"--blushing furiously. "He would not kill me."

"You don't know what he wouldn't do. I would not have you run such a risk
for the world, without me with you."

"There's no fear of that," said Emma, with set lips. "Not the slightest
fear. I should think he'd be like the snakes, and get as far out of one's
way as possible."

"A very good name for him," said Lizzie: "a snake. He is just like a
snake--that snake in the fable that was warmed in somebody's bosom and
then turned to bite. Little we thought what we were doing when we let him
into this house!"

Emma's flush deepened, and the hard line of her mouth grew harder.

"You may be sure," she said bitterly, "that he regrets the day he entered
it quite as much as we do. I've no doubt he hates the very thought of
me--loathes it--would not touch me with a pair of tongs if he could help
it."

She had her way about going to Melbourne, with Tommy for an escort. On
Monday night he scrubbed himself all over in a hot bath, and on Tuesday
morning went to have his hair cut and to buy himself a new necktie; for
it was not until Tuesday that Mr. Dawson gave his married daughter leave
to please herself.

Then, on Tuesday afternoon, brother and sister set off by the slow train,
Tommy gravely elated over his responsibilities, and Emma in better
spirits than he had seen her at any time since her separation from her
husband. They did not travel second-class, which in Australia is thought
a low thing to do, even by the little shopkeepers; Mr. Dawson had
forbidden it. "For we have not come to that yet," he said, "poor as we
are these times." And Lizzie would not hear of eight hours of hard seat
for a weakened back. They wanted Emma to wait until next morning for the
express, but she could not wait. That was the one thing about which she
was irresistibly obstinate.

"Father might change his mind, or the weather might change; let us go
while we can," she urged Tommy confidentially; and the boy sincerely
assured her that he was "on."

They left, therefore, at 3.30, and reached Melbourne before 11. It was a
delightful journey to both; weather warm, without sultriness or dust, and
the country, that looks so lonesome to un-Australian eyes, beautiful to
theirs, after the heavy rains of the cool spring. The grass was seeding,
of course, and therefore taking its tawny summer tints, but never had
they seen it so thick and fresh in the last month of the year. The corn
was being cut in the cultivated fields, scattered like isles in the sea
of bush. The plenteous harvest was almost the single sign of prosperity
left to the country in its day of unexampled adversity, and it was easy
for the most superficial eye to read it. Emma's eyes, having looked on a
landscape of wild hills only since she fled home from her cruel husband,
feasted upon the scene, so full of associations of other times and
journeyings.

"My word!" was the bush boy's frequent comment, "do look at that grass!
Won't there be some bush fires presently!"

Yes, she supposed there would. She talked to Tommy from time to time, but
for the most part she sat silent, thinking her own thoughts. It was in
December, she remembered, that she had gone on her honeymoon over this
same line, by this same slow train. Then the grass had been burnt up by
weeks of blazing weather. What a roasting day it was! and how strange and
home-sick she had felt, how heart-broken at parting with Lizzie, how
terrified at the prospect before her! She smiled as she recalled her
girlish foolishness, and Tommy thought it made her look like her old self
again. Now she could not disguise from herself that she was home-sick in
quite a different way. It was homesickness that was drawing her from her
father's house back to Sorrento and the sea. She was beginning to feel,
though she did not understand the fact--which really is a fact, though it
is the fashion to deny it--that it is not only better to have loved and
lost than never to have loved at all, but better to have even a bad
husband than to have none; meaning, of course, a bad husband like David,
who was still a man--not a brute-beast in human shape, like Neill and
Deeming.

I don't think I have mentioned that Emma Knox was pretty--very pretty--and
only twenty-five last birthday. In her dark serge skirt and jacket and
striped cotton blouse, with the neatest sailor hat on her curly fringe
and protuberant Clytie knot, and a trim little veil to keep all in order,
she was a charming figure--that kind of figure which you see, as soon as
you look at it, was never meant to go about the world without a man to
take care of it. Emma had never known what it was to want a man--certainly
not at a railway station in the night--and so felt a little timorous, a
little of the castaway, on stepping upon the platform at Spencer Street.
But Tommy rose to the occasion, shaking himself from the fetters of
untimely sleep. He shouldered the bag they shared between them, thrust
his arm gallantly between his sister and the crowd, and escorted her to
the tram and the Victoria Coffee Palace with the air of a father in
charge of a toddling babe. He had not seen the lights of Melbourne since
he was a petticoated child himself, but nothing daunted him.

They had little bedrooms side by side, in one of which they shared a
frugal supper of Lizzie's sandwiches and wine and water from a travelling
flask and the toilet bottle. In the old days David used to put up at
Menzies', and she remembered how he once brought her the most delicious
trayful after she had gone to bed, with his own hands.

"How odd it feels," she mused aloud, "to be in a place like this without
him!"

"I should think it does," said Tommy, knowing whom she meant by him. "I
should think you'd miss him awfully sometimes."

She was not angry. She sighed, and looked tired. "Well, you are a good
substitute, dear," she rejoined, gathering the crumbs of their repast
into a screw of paper. "But now we must get to sleep as fast as we can,
so as to be fresh for our trip in the morning."

She saw him to bed and tucked him up, and he was asleep in five minutes.
But she could not get away from her thoughts of David--David at his good
times--for hours. It was four o'clock before she ceased to hear the
post-office chimes. At seven she awoke, and the first sound she was
conscious of as the pattering of rain.

"Oh-h-h!"

Tommy heard her groan and came running in.

"It won't be much--it can't be--so lovely as it was yesterday," he cried.

"Even if it is, we must go, Tommy."

"Of course we must."

They dressed themselves, and found their way through a public
drawing-room to a balcony overlooking the street.

"Hurrah!" cried the boy. "It's left off! I told you so!"

It had; but the sky had a dull and stormy look, and a fierce, muggy wind
was blowing.

"North," remarked Emma gloomily, with her hands over her hair, and her
eyes screwed up. "Just my luck!"

"Well, a north wind will be much better on the sea than on the land."

"If Lizzie were here, she'd make me wait till tomorrow."

"Oh, I wouldn't wait, if I were you."

"I can't! I must go! I feel as if something was drawing me--that I can't
resist. But I know all my pleasure is going to be spoilt. It is my
fate--always."

Tommy continued to combat this point of view, and they went to breakfast.
Before breakfast they bought a paper from the little girl on the
doorstep, to assure themselves that nothing had happened to prevent the
Hygeia from keeping her engagements. No; that was all right. She was to
start at 10.30, as usual.

They were ready to set off by a little after nine, and then it was
raining again. "A few heat drops," said Tommy; adding, when they soon
ceased to fall, the inevitable and triumphant "I told you so!" When they
sat down on a bench at the railway station, tickets in hand, to wait for
a Port Melbourne train, a little sheltered from the howling blast, they
persuaded themselves that it was really going to be a fine day, and
Emma's spirits rose. She began to think of the Back Beach, and the ocean
rollers, and the sweet little bowery paths cut in the scrubby cliffs,
where she and David used to wander, yawning for weariness of them and of
each other (a disagreeable detail that she chose to forget), in the first
long week of their married life. How she longed to see them again! And it
was going to be fine, after all.

The wind blew them on to the pier and up the gangway of the boat, Tommy
holding on to his hat and his bag of bananas, Emma trying to keep her
hair and her skirts together; and then they reached a haven of peace in
two of the Hygeia's little chairs, on her spacious covered deck. There
the wind, if only it had been not quite so boisterous, was beautiful.
Wind and sea go naturally together. The bay was lumpy and ruffled, full
of little waves; they lapped and splashed against the piles of the pier,
and seethed along the vessel's side; and Emma's ears drank in the sound
like music, and her heart swelled as if with the exhilaration of strong
wine.

"This is what I wanted!" she said, settling herself in a quiet corner by
the open rails. "Oh, I know it is going to do me such a lot of good! Oh,
Tommy, you don't know what the sight of the sea is to me after all this
long time!"

She caught her breath hysterically, and was silent for a minute; then,
with cheerful calmness, urged the boy to walk about and amuse himself,
and not mind her. She was all right now. She had her book. She wanted
nothing more.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles, in one volume, lay ostentatiously open on her
knee, and she turned the pages over. But never a word, even of that new
and notorious work, did she read, or want to read, to-day. However, Tommy
was satisfied, and went to look at the saloon and the machinery, and to
make friends with the ship's officers, who fed his country curiosity and
entertained him gloriously for the whole voyage.

Even after the last train had arrived there were not many passengers--a
mere handful, compared with the hundreds that used to crowd the bay boats
in the old times--the good old times, when she and David took trips
together. And the ships were few at the port piers, not jammed together
from end to end, and overflowing into the open, as she had always seen
them. And all was changed! Where life used to be bright and stirring, it
was now flat and dull--"stale," to use the expressive schoolboy adjective
so much in vogue--stale as soda-water uncorked since yesterday. The fizz
was gone out of everything. But then a north wind always predisposes you
to look on the dark side; and not only did the wind keep in that
detestable quarter, and blow as it always does blow therefrom, but the
rain came on before the boat reached Queenscliff, destroying all hope of
a fine day.

Tommy came to tell his sister when Queenscliff was in sight--the pretty
hill of trees, and the town that rises so charmingly out of the water on
a fine day. In its sad, wet veil she did not want to look at it. She sat
still where she was, with her face to the sea, while Tommy watched, with
deep interest, the debarking passengers scrambling under their umbrellas
down to the streaming pier. "After all," he said, when this sensation was
past, "it's a pity we did not wait another day. I can see you are not
enjoying yourself a bit."

"Oh, but I am--I am!" she responded to the reproach in his voice. "And
there's plenty of time for it to clear before we reach Sorrento. The wind
is going down. I daresay it will be delightful when we get there."

And when they got there it did not rain much, not enough to wet them
seriously between the pier and the hotel. Dinner at the Continental was
an essential part of the programme. She and David had lived at the
Continental during their honeymoon, and she had been tantalising Tommy
with descriptions of the meals they used to have.

When they reached the house, the feeling of things being changed came
back in force. There were no gay visitors flocking around, as they used
to do at this hungry hour; and, having been accustomed to walk into
hotels under the wing of a big husband, Emma felt vaguely small and
mean--as if she had greatly come down in the world--when she entered this
one without him. The large dining-room, where they had eaten so many nice
things together, had the air of desolation that prevailed elsewhere. All
its tables were fully set, with flowers in the middle and spiky napkins
sticking out of the wine-glasses, as for a hundred guests; but no guests
were there. Yes--five; so few that they were lost in the expanse, but
enough to show that the dinner had not vanished, if the company had. Mrs.
Knox sat down in the wilderness of white damask, and drew off her gloves.
A silent waiter stole up with a couple of soup plates, and Tommy fell to
with all his heart. And gradually the room grew so dark that they could
hardly see the end of it, and the rain swept past the windows in an
opaque sheet.

"Isn't it too, too bad!" wailed Emma, under her breath. "My one day!"

"Perhaps we might come again to-morrow," suggested Tommy, with his mouth
full of fish.

"I can't afford two days," she sighed. "And we shall never, never get to
the Back Beach!"

"Oh, yes, we shall," he replied comfortingly. "This won't last. It is too
heavy. Have some beer, old girl--it'll cheer you up."

"I really believe I will," she said, with a tearful laugh. And she
ordered some. "Well, at any rate, whatever else goes wrong, the dinner is
all right, isn't it?"

"Rather!" assented Tommy, with all the emphasis at his command. He had
got hold of the bill of fare, and found that he could go on for as long
as he liked without adding to the necessary fee.

They had enjoyed an excellent ragout of beef and olives, and Emma had
finished, and Tommy was starting a course of poultry, when a belated
guest entered--making eight. It was still raining heavily, and the room
was a cave of shadows; but this person, by reason of his size, the light
colour of his clothes, and the bright redness of his beard, shone in the
doorway like the sun through clouds. It was impossible to overlook him,
unless your back was turned, like Tommy's. Emma sat against the wall,
with her face to the door, and had nothing to do but to gaze about her;
consequently she saw him the moment he entered, and to the best
advantage. Also, he saw her. But whereas she started as if she had been
shot, turned crimson as a peony and then white as milk, his cold eyes
travelled calmly over her, and he walked to his seat, shook out his
napkin, and signalled for his dinner, as indifferent to her presence,
apparently, as if she had been a piece of furniture.

In a dry voice she said to Tommy, as soon as she could speak, "Make
haste, dear; I want to go."

"It's no use going while it pours like this," he answered reasonably.
"Where could you go? Better stay under shelter till it holds up. And I
want some lemon tart, if you don't mind--and some maraschino jelly, and
cheese. Wouldn't you like some cheese and salad? You haven't had half a
dinner."

"I can't eat any more," she whispered faintly. "But you have what you
like. Only don't be long."

She leaned back against the wall, and tried to look indifferent and calm,
like David. But she felt sick. Was this what she had made such frantic
efforts to get to Sorrento for? To meet her husband like a stranger, and
to be spurned in that insulting manner, as if she were the dirt under his
feet--as if he were the injured instead of the injurer! She should have
listened to Lizzie. Oh, if Lizzie were here, how she could pay him out
for that! But she had no Lizzie--she was alone and defenceless. That was
his opportunity. That was what he had always done--taken advantage of her
helplessness to be cruel to her. Oh, it was cruel! How could he do
it--when she was not well--when he could see how solitary she was, straying
about unattended and uncared for, save by a little schoolboy, too little
to defend her against a big, strong man. Tears of self-pity came into her
eyes, but she got rid of them quickly, terrified lest he should see her
letting herself down to care. She did not care--not she. But a great lump
stuck fast in her throat, and she could not keep her eyes off him.

Of course he had turned his back on her, or nearly turned it. She could
just see the tip of his blunt nose and the line of his hairy cheek. What
a fine man he was! She thought he was a little stouter than of old--their
troubles had not told on him as they had on her--and his rough grey suit
was very becoming. Positively he was handsome. They used to jeer at his
red beard, but it was a beautiful beard. Auburn--not red. His severe
tranquillity, under the circumstances, was astounding. He ate his dinner
as calmly as if she were a hundred miles away from him--as, doubtless, he
wished she was. No, it was a matter of perfect indifference to him. He
didn't care where she was or what she did. He would not care if she were
dead. Perhaps he wished she was, so that he could marry somebody else.
And she wondered with terror--for it had never occurred to her
before--whether he had begun to love somebody else. She wondered what he
had come to Sorrento for. Not with any idea of seeing her, and making the
quarrel up, clearly. With her heart swelling and thumping in every part
of her body at once, burning through and through with mortification and
resentment, she wondered whether she could sit out Tommy's dinner without
bursting into tears.

Fortunately, she managed that. When, with a satisfied sigh, he announced
that he had done, there was nothing in her veiled face to attract the
attention that was again wholly at her service. He was quite happy and
comfortable, and assumed that she was, too. And now all her desire was to
get him out of the room in ignorance of his brother-in-law's presence
there, and to get herself past that maddening person with a proper show
of dignity. This, also, she managed fairly well, by keeping her nose very
much up in the air, and hustling the boy along at a run. And great was
her satisfaction, when out of doors again, to feel that she had not made
a fool of herself for David's amusement.

Out of doors it rained still, and she did not know where to go. In the
bright and stirring old days the trams would be running to and from the
Back Beach every few minutes, but now they had stopped, and the cabs were
at the pier. She could walk to the Back Beach, but it would tire her
dreadfully, and there would hardly be time to walk there and back too.
Besides, she would be soaked; not that that mattered. There was no one to
care whether she took her death of cold or not. It would be the best
thing that could happen. But in the first place it was necessary to get
out of the path that David would traverse when he had finished his
dinner.

She stepped over a magnificent dog lying on the door-mat, and led Tommy
round the house to a quiet corner that she knew of, where a verandah
sheltered them, and they were out of view from the public approach. Here
they stood and watched the rain, until the grey sky lightened, and Emma
calculated that David must have finished his meal and gone.

Then she said to her brother: "Tommy, dear, go to the Back Beach I must!
It is clearing up, and we have over an hour still. Run, like a good boy,
and find out if any trams are starting. If not, get a cab and bring it
here. I am a little tired, and you'll go quicker without me."

Off went Tommy at full speed. Emma stood on the steps of the paved path
to the hotel dining-room, to wait for his return. And David quietly came
down that path behind her.

As soon as she knew that it was he--and she knew it the moment she heard
his step--she moved aside to let him pass, and stood very rigidly, staring
at the sky. And he did pass her--almost. Just as she was seized with an
insane impulse to beg him to take some notice of her, he checked his
stride and spoke. His voice was abrupt and cold, but she had never before
been so glad to hear it.

"Won't you get wet?"

She answered, without looking at him, "Oh, no; I have my ulster on"--and
then wished she had not been so familiar. She remembered how she had been
humiliated, and pressed her lips together.

"I think you had better stand under the verandah. There's no use in
catching cold for nothing."

"I shall do very well where I am, thank you."

"Where's Tommy gone?"

"To get me a cab or a tram. I want to go to the Back Beach."

"I'll see about it. Perhaps he doesn't know where to find them."

"Pray don't trouble. He knows perfectly. We don't require any
assistance."

She was quite pleased with her lofty tone and demeanour. But when he took
her at her word, and then and there walked off, without even a good-bye,
she raged at herself for having spoken so nastily, and was seriously
upset. "That was my first chance," she said, "and perhaps it will be my
last. It would serve me right." Yet she looked eagerly for the coming cab
or tram, making sure--almost sure--that David would return with it. He had
evidently noticed that she was not strong, and was alive to the fact that
she was not adequately protected. He really had a kind heart at bottom.
And he must care something about her still. He was not anxious for her to
die, so that he might marry somebody else.

It was the tram that came, and she ran across the road to meet it. But
only Tommy sat in the open carriage, and she saw by his face that he had
not seen David. She was absurdly disappointed, and could not speak when
the boy pointed out to her that it had quite left off raining. She
thought of the times when she and David had gone spinning together over
the bosky tram-road to the ocean shore. Could he have forgotten them? He
had heard her say that she was going now; had he no wish to return to
those old haunts with her? But of course he had not. And it was all her
fault.

The little engine whisked them through the wet bushes, and set them down
upon the lovely headland overhanging the sea--the real outside sea, with
breakers spouting round the big rock, and foaming like whipped cream
along the sands; and as she gazed at the familiar scene her throat ached,
and her eyes burned, and her excited pulses shook her all over, worse
than ever. The wind had died down, and the rain cleared off; beyond the
breakers and the rock the waters seemed almost calmer than the bay. And
the colours were too wonderful for words. A wide band of dove-blue
sky--herald of another squall--lay over the horizon, and under it a breadth
of peacock-purple sea that no painter would dare to imitate, because the
critics, people who don't notice atmospheric effects, would turn up their
noses and exclaim, "Who ever saw sea like that?" And the sea in the
middle, under the clearer sky, was more artistically unnatural still--a
metallic, translucent, bright pea-green, with pinky-lilac shadows under
the clouds. It had almost a stagey glare and gaudiness about it--or that
is what a faithful picture of it would have had; the real thing was so
exquisitely beautiful that no one in a pensive mood could stand it. Emma
stumbled down the winding paths a little way, until she came to a bench
where she could sit at ease and look out, as from a lighthouse tower,
upon the scene, and there she dropped, feeling as if her heart would
break. It had come to this--cry she must. She had borne up gallantly,
considering that she had no health to support her, but she could bear up
no longer. So she said to her brother, "Tommy, dear, I feel as if I
should like to be alone a little while. I'm--I'm tired. You go down to the
beach and amuse yourself. Get some shells and things for Lizzie. I'll sit
here and rest till it is time to start."

This, of course, was Tommy's natural impulse, and down he went, promising
to be back by a quarter to four, when the last tram started for the
steamer. He was out of sight immediately, and not another soul was to be
seen. She looked all round to satisfy herself of that, and then took out
her pocket-handkerchief, laid her two arms on the back of the bench,
buried her face in them, and thoroughly enjoyed a good hearty
outburst--got the lump out of her throat, and the swelling out of her
breast, and felt better after it than she had done for months.

While still abandoned to this paroxysm, but over the first violence of
it, the big grey man from the hotel came down upon her, and this time she
did not hear him. For not only did she indulge in tears, she also moaned
aloud, because that was a luxury denied her in her father's house, where
Lizzie was for ever watching her. She cried, "Oh--oh--oh-h-h!" in
long-drawn wails and sighs, which filled her ears to the exclusion of
other sounds. Thus the noise of solid steps on the soft sand of the
winding footpaths was lost.

David saw her while yet some yards away, and paused to look at her. He
had fully intended to cut her if he met her again--to cut her with
particular precision and emphasis--but now he changed his mind. He had the
temper of a fiend, no doubt, but there was a little something of the
angel under it, if one took the trouble to look deep enough, and that
part of him was touched by her forlorn attitude. It was a very pretty
attitude for a slender figure, particularly about the waist. She sat as
on a horse, only much more gracefully, and under her twisted shoulders
and upraised arms the curves of her girlish shape were very dainty. Her
jacket was under her, for the bench was wet, and the simplicity of a
cotton blouse and close-clinging serge skirt exactly suited her. She had
an instinct for dress, and therefore her clothes always suited her; they
were quite simple, but never lacked distinction and style. People are
born with this attribute in all classes of life.

Presently she lifted her head to dab her red eyes and set her hat
straight, and then she saw her husband. He was behind the seat, but not
behind her face, which looked thunderstruck for the moment. As there was
not time to think how she should behave, she did not behave at all. She
cried out, piteously, "Oh, David, why do you torment me?"

He came forward at once.

"I have no thought of doing such a thing," he said stiffly. "I did not
know you were here, or I would have taken another path."

There was a little pause, and then she burst out vehemently, "One would
think I had the plague!"

He raised his brows. "Isn't that what you wish?"

"Oh," she cried, "I don't know what I wish! I'm miserable!"

Then she turned round upon the seat, and sat up primly, giving hasty
twitches to hat and veil. He hesitated for a moment, and boldly sat down
beside her.

"That cloud," said he, "is getting thicker. There's another storm
coming."

"I am afraid so," she answered, looking at the dove-blue belt, which had
a more slaty hue and a greater width than when she last noticed it. "But
it doesn't matter. There is more shelter here than there used to be."

"Yes. They've built that shed since our time."

The mention of "our time" was paralysing. She racked her brains for
another topic, but could not find one. A terrible silence ensued.

David broke it--with a thunderbolt. "What makes you miserable?" he asked
her. And, though he looked quite away from her when he spoke, she cowered
and cast her eyes upon the ground. Of course she gave the inevitable
answer--"Nothing!"

"People don't say they are miserable, and cry their hearts out, for
nothing."

"How do you know I was crying?"

"I saw you. I heard you."

"Have you been watching me?"

She took on her indignant tone, and he disdained to reply. Upon which she
veered round hastily.

"Everything makes me miserable! How can I be otherwise than miserable?"

"Why, I thought it was only being with me that made you miserable. I have
been imagining you quite enjoying yourself--with that dear, amiable sister
of yours."

"Say what you like to me, but don't sneer at her," she exclaimed in a
quarrelsome tone, and again--since he did not "answer back"--repenting. She
had no real heart for quarrelling now; nor, it appeared, had he. Lest he
should get up and go--lest this brief but precious opportunity should be
wasted like the last--she hastened to make herself more agreeable.

"Are you--are you quite well, David? You look well."

"Yes, thanks. I'm all right." He silently poked the damp ground with his
umbrella, and, having rooted up a weed or two, stole a side glance at
her. "I'm afraid I can't return the compliment," he remarked. "I don't
think you are looking well at all. I noticed it directly I saw you."

"Just now?"

"No--at lunch."

"Did you really take the trouble to notice me at lunch?"

"I did." Another palpitating pause. "What's been the matter with you,
Emmie?"

"Oh, nothing."

"Of course. I expected you would say that. Well, I suppose it is no
business of mine--"

"I mean, nothing serious; I haven't been really ill. It's--it's more mind
than body, I think."

"How's that?"

He poked five holes in the gravel while he waited vainly for an
explanation.

"I daresay," she presently continued, "I shall be ever so much the better
for this little change. The sea always does me good."

"Are you staying here?"

"No. We came by the boat this morning, and are going back now. It must be
nearly time, by the way."

"More than half an hour yet," he said, looking at his watch. "Who are
'we'?"

"Tommy and I. He has gone down to the beach to look for shells."

"Only Tommy? Are the rest of them in town?"

"No--at home. We came by ourselves, just for the trip--just because I pined
so for a breath of sea. We shall return to-morrow. Are you--?"

But she could say no more. Both jerked their heads sharply towards the
sound of an approaching step hurrying up an unseen path beneath them. In
a moment Tommy's freckled face appeared above the bushes.

"Oh, here you are!" exclaimed Emma weakly. She pretended to be much
relieved, but she was ready to cry with chagrin.

"Well, my boy," said David, with assumed heartiness, "how are you?"

Tommy stopped dead with amazement, red and breathless; then came forward
to shake hands with his brother-in-law, accepting his presence without
comment--for even a rough school-boy has a wonderful knack of behaving
like a gentleman at times in such awkward crises. His first idea was to
make himself scarce immediately.

"It's coming on to rain," he stammered. "Hadn't I better run up and see
if there's a tram about?"

He looked at David, and David looked at him, with shy affection. They had
always been good friends.

"Perhaps you'd better," said David, as Emma's reluctance to move kept her
silent. "Yes, it is coming on to pour badly. Put on your jacket, Emma."

She stood up, and he helped her on with her light coat, just as he used
to do in the honeymoon days. Perhaps he would have done something more,
and so would she, had not the storm cloud burst in a fierce shower and
driven them to seek instant shelter. They scrambled up the hill to the
long shed that was a strange place to them, and there stood side by side
behind David's umbrella--for the rain drove from the sea; and Emma began
to wonder, with a shaking heart, how the adventure was going to end.
Tommy was at the tram platform, skipping up and down with glee.

"You needn't," said David, "hug that damp thing against your thin skirt,
need you? Give it to me." He alluded to her ulster, which hung over her
folded arms.

"It is all right, thank you."

"Give it to me."

She handed it over with a smile--her first smile--pleased to hear the
imperious tone at which she used to be so absurdly offended. When he had
carefully felt it all over, he bade her put it on. He also helped her to
adjust it with the hand that was not holding the umbrella. As his big
fingers fumbled with a button near her throat, she cast down her eyes,
and blushed and trembled, as if she were being tentatively wooed again.
The old girl bashfulness prompted her to frustrate their mutual ends by a
stupid and commonplace remark:--

"What a day for a bay excursion!"

"Yes," he said slowly. "What made you choose such a day?"

"I did not choose it." And she went into explanations. "I might say,"
looking at him almost archly, "how came you to choose such a day?"

"I? Oh--business."

"Not pleasure?"

"No, indeed. I haven't been thinking much about pleasure these days. I'm
like the rest, as I suppose you know--pretty nearly stone-broke."

"What? You don't mean that! No; I never, never knew!"

"Well, I've lost a good two-thirds of the income I had when you were with
me, and Heaven knows whether I am going to save the rest. So you see,"
with sudden bitterness, "you timed it very well."

She moved closer, and looked squarely up at him, and there were tears in
her eyes. "Oh, David, how can you speak so? Do you suppose I cared for
money--for anything--"

"You certainly did not care for me," he broke in roughly. "That's all I
know."

"But, if you come to that, did you care for me?"

"I never deserted you, at any rate."

"But, Davie--"

Alas! At this critical juncture they were interrupted again. Tommy came
running to inform them that the tram was about to start. Stern duty
compelled him.

"Oh!" Emma faintly ejaculated; and then a deadly silence fell.

When all three were in the car, exposed to a rush of rain that was like a
volley of bullets, she whispered under David's umbrella, held broadside
to the gale, "Are you going by the Hygeia too?"

He said "Yes." And then they spoke no more, except to Tommy, until they
reached the boat. On the way thither they had to shelter for some minutes
in the tram-shed on the bay side. When they walked down the pier and
climbed on board, the air was clear and soft, and a pallid sky gleaming
over a mauve and pea-green sea.

On deck David picked up a chair, and asked his wife where she preferred
to sit. She chose a place astern, between two of the fixed seats, where
there were fewest people. There, being comfortably settled, with her feet
upon the rail, and her back to everybody, she felt that all she wanted in
the world was to have him in another chair beside her, to talk to her all
the way to Melbourne, which would be for two hours and a half. In that
time, surely, she would be able to explain away some of the
misapprehensions that he evidently laboured under. She burned to explain
them--to justify herself. No, not to justify herself exactly; perhaps not
even to excuse herself; but to disabuse his mind of the idea that she had
left him because she did not care for him--to make him understand, above
all things, that she was not the woman to seek comfort for herself while
those she loved were in difficulty and poverty--to wholly reconsider the
situation, in short, with a view to better arrangements.

But, instead of sitting down with her in that deliciously quiet corner,
which she had chosen on purpose, he strayed away with Tommy. They
disappeared together before she was aware of it, and did not come back.
She kept her ears pricked and her eyes turned over her left shoulder for
a long time; but the Hygeia is a boat on which one can easily lose and be
lost to one's friends, and for nearly the whole distance between Sorrento
and Queenscliff she never saw a sign of them. The fact was that David had
a great many vital questions to submit to his small brother-in-law before
he could proceed further; but this she did not think of. She imagined
that Tommy had gone off to leave the coast clear for a lover's
tête-à-tête, and that David had gone off to avoid that tête-à-tête. As
time went on, and hope and patience failed, and it seemed evident to her
that he was quite implacable, she ceased to make any pretences to
herself. She admitted that she could never bear now to go back to the
country as she had come away from it--that if he refused to let her
retrace the mad step she had taken six months ago, her heart would break,
and her life become wholly valueless to her.

A very miserable woman she was as she sat forlornly alone in her nook
between the empty seats, watching the rough tumble of the water that
could hardly shake the floor beneath her, and the floods of swirling foam
that ran past her feet, tucked between the open rails. Listening to the
sound she loved--the sweetest music in the world--and gazing on the scene
for which her soul had hungered as an exile for its home, she said to
herself that she wished she was dead--that she would like to jump up from
her chair and throw herself overboard. "If I were dead, past troubling
him any more, perhaps he would care for me a little," she thought, with
tear-filled eyes and a bursting heart. "Oh, I wish I was drowned and dead
at the bottom of the sea!"

Then something occurred whereby she nearly had that wish. The Hygeia was
nearing Queenscliff--where Emma was convinced that David would get off and
finish his journey by train, so as to be finally rid of her--and the
Flinders, on its way to Launceston, was making for the Heads. The two
fast boats, like long-lost brothers hastening to embrace each other, kept
their respective courses at full speed until they met, and the bows of
the Tasmanian boat were only a few yards from the side of the bay
steamer, rather more than a few yards from the end. To err is human, even
in the case of ships' officers, who, it must be admitted, err less,
professionally, than any body of known men; and the navigator of the
excursion boat had the apparently reasonable idea that he could get past
in time. So he did; but an "imminent collision" was spoken of in the
evening papers, and the Marine Board, not having enough to do with
inquiring into things that did happen, gladly took note of those that
might have done so, and decided, in sundry forms and ceremonies lasting
over a fortnight, that the Hygeia had incurred penalties for violating--or
nearly violating--the rules of the road. Certainly a collision did seem
imminent for a moment--even inevitable. Romantic reporters described the
Hygeia's people as rushing for life-belts and cork jackets in a panic of
fright; but there was no time for that--no time even to turn the button
which would have showered those articles upon all in need of them. They
simply got up from their chairs and stood for a breathless instant with
their hearts in their mouths. Then, the Flinders having already backed
her engines, the Hygeia ported her helm, whisking round with the light
speed of a waltzing lady; and, sideways to each other, they swept apart,
and went their ways as if nothing had happened. In fact, nothing had
happened. It was all over in a breath.

But in that breath things changed for Emma. She sat facing the Flinders
as it came up, exactly in the path of the towering bows; and as she
sprang from her chair an arm was flung round her, and she was whirled
from that dangerous place.

"Don't be frightened, dear; stick to me," said David, And the boat slewed
round, and they saw they were not going into the water. Emma, though she
did not want to drown now, had a moment's keen disappointment. She
thought how beautiful it would have been to be shipwrecked, and saved by
her gallant husband; for, of course, he would have saved her. Next moment
he was leading her back to her seat, laughing confusedly; she, hanging on
his arm, bathed in delicious blushes from head to foot.

"Ha! I say, that was a narrow shave! I really thought she was into us,"
he said, as he handed her a chair.

"Yes; and wasn't it odd?"--her voice quivered and her eyes filled--"I was
just wishing I was at the bottom of the sea."

"Don't talk nonsense," he rejoined, very roughly, but with no unkindness
in his tone.

"It isn't nonsense. I don't care a bit for my life--as things are now."
There was a wail in her voice. "David, you are not going away again, are
you?"

"Only to get a chair."

He fetched a chair, and sat down beside her, very close. Flanked by the
two empty seats, and with their backs to the deck, where all the
passengers, Tommy included, were looking towards Queenscliff pier with
their backs to them, they enjoyed some minutes of welcome privacy.

"And so you haven't found it so very jolly, after all?"

He smiled a little to himself, but did not let her see it.

"Oh, David, I have been so miserable--so utterly miserable--without you!"

"And you were utterly miserable with me. So what's to be done?"

"It was my fault, David. I know I don't deserve to be forgiven--"

Too overcome to proceed, she looked at him with swimming eyes, and put
out her hand appealingly. He took it and held it, gently kneading it
between his own.

"I think it was mostly mine," he said. "I know I've got a vile temper,
and you did use to rile me, old girl, now didn't you?"

"I was a beast."

"No, no, you weren't. But--well, we didn't understand each other, did we?
We were both too new to it, I suppose. I should have been gentler with a
delicate little thing like you. I have been awfully sorry about it many a
time."

"You never wrote to me, David!"

"You never wrote to me, Emmie."

"I didn't like to."

"And I couldn't, after your telling me--"

"Oh, don't speak of that! If you knew how I have regretted those hasty,
wicked words, how I've wanted to come back--"

"There, there!" he whispered soothingly, for her emotion was so great
that it threatened to attract notice. "Let's say no more about it. Come
back, if you feel you want to; if you think you can put up with such an
ogre as I am--a ruined man, into the bargain."

"Oh, I don't mind your being poor--all the better! I can work for you, as
well as you for me. I can do without a servant--"

"No, no; I'm not so badly off as that. I'm not going to let you slave and
fag, and wear yourself out. It's for me to take care of you, pet. And I
mean to do it--a little better than I did last time. When I get you again,
I'll see if I can't fatten you up a bit, and put the roses back into your
cheeks. You are looking wretched."

"No wonder! No wonder!"

"Only you must promise not to throw me over again, Emmie, if we happen to
quarrel. I daresay I shall be obstreperous sometimes--I'll try not--"

"Darling! Darling!"

She leaned against his bent shoulder, put an arm across his breast, which
she could hardly span, and her lips to his prickly red moustache. He
clasped her for a moment, and they snatched an eager kiss. Of course
people saw them, even with their backs. turned, and were visibly
scandalized. But Emma, while blushing for her indiscretion, refused to be
ashamed of it.

"Are we not husband and wife?" she demanded bridling.

"Thank God we are!" he replied; "and what we've got to do now is to keep
so. But, Emmie, let us behave ourselves in a public place. Put your hat
straight, my dear. I am going now to get you a cup of tea."

He lent downstairs, leaving her, in her palpitating happiness, to tuck up
her loose hair, arrange her veil, and otherwise compose herself. When he
returned, Tommy was with him, grinning from ear to ear, and capering for
joy.

"My word," he whispered audibly, "you little thought what you were coming
to the seaside for, did you? And on such a bad day too! Wasn't it a bit
of luck?"

Emma looked at him with solemn, impassioned eyes.

"I believe," she said, breathing deeply, "that I was led."

It came on to rain and blow again harder than ever--a gale fierce enough
to snap hawsers wholesale, according to later reports; but the Hygeia,
with weather awnings down, slipped calmly through it, and David and Emma,
when they had moved forward a little, were perfectly dry and comfortable.
Never in all their lives had they been so comfortable before. Then, at
about five o'clock, the colour came into the sea again, and the loveliest
rainbow into the sky.

David pointed to it.

"The world is not to be drowned any more, Emmie."

"Not by me," she answered, with a chastened smile.

Tommy had left them for a long time, and now came creeping back to give
them the encouragement of his opinion that it was going to be a fine
evening after all.

"I believe so," said David. "And I was just regretting that we hadn't
stayed at Sorrento. We could have had a nice long ramble before dark."

"Oh, but we couldn't have stayed, you know. We promised to go home
to-morrow. I've got my examinations next week."

"Well, my boy, you can go. I'll see you off safely, and get somebody to
look after you on the journey. But Emma had better stay with me. One day
of the sea isn't enough for her--she wants a longer change. Tell Lizzie I
don't think, by the look of her, that she has been at all well taken care
of up there--"

"David, hush!"

"And that I think she's safer in my charge. We go back to Sorrento,
Emmie, and stop there over Sunday, since the sea does you so much good."

* * * * * * * * * *

From the book, "At Midnight and Other Storie" by Ada Cambridge
This eBook was produced by: Colin Choat
Courtesy: Project Gutenberg Australia

Detailed Wikipedia article (with photo) on "ADA CAMBRIDGE":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Cambridge

Grateful thanks to Ada Cambridge, Colin Choat, Project Gutenberg Australia and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.