e so nearly
swung it against Mr. Linden that her first look was a startled one.

"Miss Faith!" he said, turning round, "what can you possibly be about!"

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Linden!"--said Faith.

"Is that all you are about?"

"You were anxious about your supper, Mr. Linden--Are you ready for it?"

"Much more ready than anxious, Miss Faith."

"How do you like the shore to-day?" said Faith, dropping her voice, and
giving a glance of her eye to the fair, cool sunlight colours on the
water and shore and shipping--fresh as the very sea-breeze itself, and
glittering as the water's thousand mirrors could make them.

He turned and looked again, drawing in the breeze with a deep breath
that more than answered her question.

"How do you like this?" he said, handing her through the window a
little miniature tree of red sea-weed. Then, while she examined it, he
repeated,--

"'When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox,
Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,
Laden with sea-weed from the rocks;

"'From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,
In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing
Surges of San Salvador;

"'From the tumbling surf that buries
The Orkneyan skerries,
Answering the hoarse Hebrides;
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting
Spars, uplifting
On the desolate, rainy seas;--

"'Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless main;
Till in shelter d coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,
All have found repose again.'"

Faith's eye was upon the sprig of sea-weed while these verses were
repeating,--then she looked up at the speaker with an intenseness in
which oddly mingled some strong feeling of sorrow or regret.

"It's beautiful!"--she said,--"beautiful!--both the one and the other.
But there are a great many things there I don't understand,"--she added
once more with a smile. "If there was time--but there isn't.--Mr.
Linden, Reuben and I have been roasting clams."

"Yes, Miss Faith," he said answering the smile and stepping nearer the
window. "So one of my senses informed me. Do you know what that is in
your hand?"

"It's sea-weed, isn't it?"

"Yes. And moreover--Miss Faith, that is part of your marine Flora. Now
what about the clams?"

"My _what?_" said Faith. "First tell me, please, what you said."

"Your m