That rather proved the excellence of the estimate the author had made of Wivernsea out of the season. Castle builders could leave their tools uncared for and find them when they returned. Not because of a superabundance of honesty around; rather because of the lack of thieves.
The castle creator continued her work; the pail-shaped battlements increased in number. She handled bucket and spade with the same earnestness, eagerness and engrossment with which she had fingered the pen.
Those were methods which appealed to the story-creator. But just now he was not working with his own accustomed engrossment, eagerness and earnestness. A disturbing element had crept in.
From time to time he glanced towards the other end of the seat. There the disturbing element lay: or rather sat. It seemed that there was something magnetic about that presence there. He experienced a difficulty in keeping his eyes away. Noting the neatness of the dress worn by the woman, he could not fail to note too its sombre hue: mourning evidently. His lively imagination was busily at work in a moment.
For him to weave a complete story with such material, was an easy task. A pretty girl occupied the stellar part in it. He portrayed her as a motherless one forced to face a hard, cold world. Depicted her seeking a living in it as a governess.
That imagination of his had a habit of running away with him. Perhaps that was a reason why his fiction had so good a run. His books were mostly all of the many-editioned kind. So, neglecting his own story for fiction of another kind, the time came of the going down of the sun. The tint of the vasty-deep changed: the sea grew greyer. His heroine-presumptive closed her book and rose; cried:
"Gracie!"
Seeing that the child's attention had been attracted, she turned, and bowing slightly, smilingly wished Masters:
"Good-day!"
From the sands, the little girl waved a vigorous cumbered-with-bucket-and-spade good-bye to him. She evidently preferred jumping the breakwaters on the way home to the more easy path of the sea wall. The two passed altogether from the author's sight. Not altogether from his mind.