Since girlhood her pet character in fiction had been Alan Breck; not for his swashbuckling gallantry, nor the efficient way with him in sword play, but because, as she herself put it, "he wanted looking after so dreadfully."
Graeme Jakes, in some subtle way that eluded analysis, appealed to her in much the same manner. His clothes lacked buttons at times and his hair was generally dreadfully untidy. She would like, she thought, to brush his hair for him ... in a brisk, sisterly fashion.
The tranquillity of her meditations would have been sorely disturbed could she have seen the object of her thoughts. Half a mile away, from a vantage point amid the dewy bracken, stood her devout lover, watching with all a lover's faculty for self-hypnotism a light burning behind a blind in one of the upper windows of the farm. Fondly he watched its orange glow through the darkness until it was abruptly extinguished, and returned home in a mood of exalted melancholy. Judge though how greater the melancholy had he realised the blind screened no other than the conjugal chamber of the farmer and his wife....
The days went by thus to merge into weeks, and the children's visit was fast drawing to a close. Graeme, too, had received orders to attend at the Admiralty for medical survey. The halcyon days were numbered.
They had planned an expedition to the coast, an all-day affair that was to include sea-bathing for the children, for the last day. The sun shone out of a cloudless sky, the air was clear and sweet with autumn scents, and the cavalcade set forth on the appointed morning in wild spirits. Mrs. Mackworth had provided lunch and tea, and the food, together with bathing things, cameras, and all the impedimenta of a holiday, were piled into the pony cart. Miss Mayne held the reins and Georgina walked at the pony's head; Jane and her brother ranged along the hedgerows like a couple of terriers; while Graeme brought up the rear, outwardly cheerful, but inwardly experiencing the varied sensations of a man who has decided to propose ere the going down of the sun to a damsel whose only concern appeared to be to avoid being left alone in his company.
They reached the sea about noon; Graeme had chosen a little bay where the sands were safe for bathing. The coast stretched away on one hand in a waste of dunes and marsh, and on the other rose in indented cliffs from a rock-strewn beach.
On the top of the cliffs they unpacked the baskets, turned the pony loose to graze, and, when the children had had their longed-for bathe, lunched al fresco as might the gods have eaten upon Olympus.
It was after lunch that Graeme made his first anxious bid for the company of Miss Mayne alone. "Supposing you three go and explore the caves," he suggested to the children, a clumsy argument which, for its very ingenuousness, roused no suspicions in that maiden's heart.
"But what about you and Miss Mayne?" inquired Jane.
"Well," said Graeme feebly, "p'raps we'll go and look for seagulls' eggs along the cliffs."