lue of the sky. I remember, when Miss Blunt stepped ashore
and stood upon the beach, relieved against the heavy shadow of a recess
in the cliff, while her father and I busied ourselves with gathering up
our baskets and fastening the anchor--I remember, I say, what a figure
she made. There is a certain purity in this Cragthorpe air which I have
never seen approached,--a lightness, a brilliancy, a _crudity_, which
allows perfect liberty of self-assertion to each individual object in
the landscape. The prospect is ever more or less like a picture which
lacks its final process, its reduction to unity. Miss Blunt's figure, as
she stood there on the beach, was almost _criarde_; but how lovely it
was! Her light muslin dress, gathered up over her short white skirt, her
little black mantilla, the blue veil which she had knotted about her
neck, the crimson shawl which she had thrown over her arm, the little
silken dome which she poised over her head in one gloved hand, while the
other retained her crisp draperies, and which cast down upon her face a
sharp circle of shade, out of which her cheerful eyes shone darkly and
her happy mouth smiled whitely,--these are some of the hastily noted
points of the picture.

"Young woman," I cried out, over the water, "I do wish you might know
how pretty you look!"

"How do you know I don't?" she answered. "I should think I might. You
don't look so badly, yourself. But it's not I; it's the accessories."

"Hang it! I am going to become profane," I called out again.

"Swear ahead," said the Captain.

"I am going to say you are devilish pretty."

"Dear me! is that all?" cried Miss Blunt, with a little light laugh,
which must have made the tutelar sirens of the cove ready to die with
jealousy down in their submarine bowers.

By the time the Captain and I had landed our effects, our companion had
tripped lightly up the forehead of the cliff--in one place it is very
retreating--and disappeared over its crown. She soon reappeared with an
intensely white handkerchief added to her other provocations, which she
waved to us, as we trudged upward, carrying our baskets. When we stopped
to take breath on the summit, and wipe our foreheads, we of course
rebuked her who was roaming about idly with her parasol and gloves.

"Do you think I am going to take any trouble or do any work?" cried Miss
Esther, in the greatest good-humor. "Is not this my holiday? I am not
going to raise a finger, nor soil these