les
thrown off; and presently the tiny steamer was running out to the windy
and gray-green sea, the waves of which not unfrequently sent a shower of
spray across her decks. The small party of voyagers crouched behind the
funnel, and were well out of the water's way.

"Look there now," cried Mr. Drummond, suddenly pointing to a large bird
that was flying by, high up in the air, about a quarter of a mile
off--"do you see that? Do you know what that is? That is a wild goose, a
gray lag, that has been driven in by bad weather; _now_ can you say we
have no waves, and winds, and sea in the south?"

Miss Violet was not daunted.

"Perhaps it is a goose," she said coolly. "I never saw but one flying---
you remember you shot it. What farm-yard has this one left?"

"Oh, for shame, Violet," Mrs. Warrener called out, "to rake up old
stories!"

She was punished for it. The insulted sportsman was casting about for
the cruelest retort he could think of, when, as it happened, Miss Violet
bethought her of looking round the corner of the boiler to see whether
they were getting near Ryde; and at the same moment it also happened
that a heavy wave, striking the bows of the steamer, sent a heap of
water whirling down between the paddle-box and the funnel, which caught
the young lady on the face with a crack like a whip. As to the shout of
laughter which then greeted her, that small party of folks had heard
nothing like it for many a day. There was salt water dripping from her
hair; salt water in her eyes; salt water running down her tingling and
laughing cheeks; and she richly deserved to be asked, as she was
immediately asked, whether the Solent was compounded of water and marl
or water and chalk, and which brand she preferred.

Was it the balmy southern air that tempered the vehemence of these
wanderers as they made their way across the island, and getting into a
carriage at Ventnor, proceeded to drive along the Undercliff? There was
a great quiet prevailing along these southern shores. They drove by
underneath the tall and crumbling precipices, with wood pigeons
suddenly shooting out from the clefts, and jackdaws wheeling about far
up in the blue. They passed by sheltered woods, bestarred with anemones
and primroses, and showing here and there the purple of the as yet
half-opened hyacinth; they passed by lush meadows, all ablaze with the
golden yellow of the celandine and the purple of the ground ivy; they
passed by the broken, pict