en?" asked she, pretending sternness.

"Just along by the shore." He noticed as he said it that Mabel's frock
had a dragged look about the waist, and that the seams were noticeable
because of its tightness. He remembered that her frocks had this
appearance frequently, and he wished they were not so ill-made.

"I shan't let you in," cried Mabel sportively, "till you tell me exactly
what you've been doing for this age."

"I have not been serving my age much," he said, with some weariness in
his tone.

"What?" said Mabel.

"You asked me what I had been doing for this age," said he. It was
miserably stupid to explain.

When Caius and Mabel had sauntered up through the warm fields to the
house, his mother met them in the front parlour with a fresh cap on. Her
cap, and her presence in that room, denoted that Mabel was company. She
immediately began to make sly remarks concerning Mabel's coming to them
while Caius was at home, about her going to meet him, and their homeward
walk together.

The mother was comparatively at ease about Mabel; she had little idea
that Caius would ever make love to her, so she could enjoy her
good-natured slyness to the full. What hurt Caius was that she did enjoy
it, that it was just her natural way never to see two young people of
opposite sex together without immediately thinking of the subject of
marriage, and sooner or later betraying her thought. Heretofore he had
been so accustomed to this cast of mind that, when it had tickled
neither his sense of humour nor his vanity, he had been indifferent to
it. To-night he knew it was vulgar; but he had no contempt for it,
because it was his mother who was betraying vulgarity. He felt sorry
that she should be like that--that all the men and women with whom she
was associated were like that. He felt sorry for Mabel, because she
enjoyed it, and consequently more tenderhearted towards her than he had
ever felt before.

He had not, however, a great many thoughts to give to this sorrow, for
he was thinking continually of the bright apparition of the afternoon.

When he went to his room to get ready for tea he fell into a muse,
looking over the fields and woods to the distant glimpse of blue water
he could see from his window. When he came down to the evening meal, he
found himself wondering foolishly upon what food the child lost in the
sea had fed while she grew so rapidly to a woman's stature. The present
meal was such as fell to the daily lot