ord to deposit in the hotel
safe; then he ate a hurried, scanty breakfast, and again sought the
bench on the beach.

No one was in sight, for it was scarcely breakfast-time at the
boarding-houses; so he looked for little Alice's well, and mourned to
find that the tide had not even left any sign of its location.

Then he seated himself on the bench again, contemplating his boots,
looked up the road, stared out to sea, and then looked up the road
again, tried to decipher some of the names carved on the bench, walked
backward and forward, looking up the road at each turn he made, and in
every way indicated the unpleasant effect of hope deferred.

Finally, however, after two hours of fruitless search, Mr. Putchett's
eyes were rewarded by the sight of little Alice approaching the beach
with a bathing-party. He at first hurried forward to meet her, but he
was restrained by a sentiment found alike in curbstone-brokers and in
charming young ladies--a feeling that it is not well to give one's self
away without first being sufficiently solicited to do so.

He noticed, with a mingled pleasure and uneasiness, that little Alice
did not at first recognize him, so greatly had his toilet altered his
general appearance.

Even after he made himself known, he was compelled to submit to further
delay, for the party had come to the beach to bathe, and little Alice
must bathe, too.

She emerged from a bathing-house in a garb very odd to the eyes of Mr.
Putchett, but one which did not at all change that gentleman's opinion
of the wearer. She ran into the water, was thrown down by the surf, she
was swallowed by some big waves and dived through others, and all the
while the veteran operator watched her with a solicitude, which, despite
his anxiety for her safety, gave him a sensation as delightful as it was
strange.

The bath ended, Alice rejoined Mr. Putchett and conducted him to the
spot where the wonderful shells with pink and yellow spots were found.
The new shell-seeker was disgusted when the child shouted "Come along!"
to several other children, and was correspondingly delighted when they
said, in substance, that shells were not so attractive as once they
were.

Mr. Putchett's researches in conchology were not particularly
successful, for while he manfully moved about in the uncomfortable and
ungraceful position peculiar to shell-seekers, he looked rather at the
healthy, honest, eager little face near him than at the beach itsel