nd her mother. We are going down together."

"Then I'll see whether I can in a day or two," he said, but in a tone
which pretty nearly convinced Sheila that she should not have her
stay at Brighton made pleasant by the company of her old friend and
associate.

However, the mere anticipation of seeing the sea was much; and when
they had got into a cab and were going down to Victoria Station,
Sheila's eyes were filled with a joyful anticipation. She had
discarded altogether the descriptions of Brighton that had been given
her. It is one thing to receive information, and another to reproduce
it in an imaginative picture; and in fact her imagination was busy
with its own work while she sat and listened to this person or the
other speaking of the seaside town she was going to. When they spoke
of promenades and drives and miles of hotels and lodging-houses, she
was thinking of the sea-beach and of the boats and of the sky-line
with its distant ships. When they told her of private theatricals and
concerts and fancy-dress balls, she was thinking of being out on the
open sea, with a light breeze filling the sails, and a curl of white
foam rising at the bow and sweeping and hissing down the sides of the
boat. She would go down among the fishermen when her husband and his
friends were not by, and talk to them, and get to know what they sold
their fish for down here in the South. She would find out what their
nets cost, and if there was anybody in authority to whom they could
apply for an advance of a few pounds in case of hard times. Had they
their cuttings of peat free from the nearest moss-land? and did they
dress their fields with the thatch that had got saturated with the
smoke? Perhaps some of them could tell her where the crews hailed from
that had repeatedly shot the sheep of the Flannen Isles. All these and
a hundred other things she would get to know; and she might procure
and send to her father some rare bird or curiosity of the sea, that
might be added to the little museum in which she used to sing in days
gone by, when he was busy with his pipe and his whisky.

"You are not much tired, then, by your dissipation of last night?"
said Mrs. Kavanagh to her at the station, as the slender, fair-haired,
grave lady looked admiringly at the girl's fresh color and bright
gray-blue eyes. "It makes one envy you to see you looking so strong
and in such good spirits."

"How happy you must be always!" said Mrs. Lorraine; and the