l occasion."

"You seem to want to make it one."

"And it can't be helped. This sort of modesty's out of date."

"Not my date."

"Besides, everybody'd understand."

"I know they would. That's just what I'm afraid of."

"Well, we must do something, and if you--"

Suddenly there fell upon our ears the scrambling, clattering noise
which invariably accompanies the descent of anybody rash enough to
enter a Cornish cove with undue haste in leather-soled shoes. The
Mermaid darted behind a rock, and I advanced gratefully up the
foreshore to the fringe of stones. The noise grew louder, and the
slips more frequent, until there was one long one, and then a thud. Up
rose a fat oath. After a moment or two, there limped into sight--oh,
blessed spectacle!--one of the hotel porters, conventionally hatless
and coatless.

"Ah!" said I.

"The coastguard you sent hailed me, sir, across the fields yonder.
Said something had happened--he didn't know what--but he heard the word
'hotel.' You see, you shouting to him from here, and he being up on
top, he couldn't hear anything else rightly, so I came straight down."

"Why didn't he come down himself when--er--when I shouted?"

"He was taking a telegram to the post office sir. Said he told you so;
but I suppose you didn't hear."

Berry's coastguard. Berry's porter.

I told him that my clothes had been washed away, and that the mermaid
was in the same plight. I gave him implicit instructions and, with her
assistance, the numbers of our respective rooms. He wrote it all down.
He was to get some clothes for me himself, and enlist the services of a
chambermaid for my companion.

"Be as quick as you can," I said, as he turned to go. "You're sure
you'll know this cove again? They're all rather alike."

"That's all right, sir."

The next moment he was half-way up the path. If he had looked back, he
would have beheld the singular and doubtless pleasing spectacle of the
Mermaid and myself doing the real Argentine tango along the stretch of
yellow sand.

She did not see the blood on my hand for a minute or two. Then:

"My dear lad, what have you done to your hand?"

"Cut on the rocks," I said laconically. "Nothing of any consequence, I
assure you. I shall be able to proceed home."

"After attention. Let me look at it."

And so it came about that, when the boots returned, my left hand was
bound up with a strip of chemise, and the bandage was tied with the
pale