All the things he said to Clarissa that morning, I shall in all probability never hear. Whatever they were, she listened to him. I saw her bending down and patting his back as he laughed and chattered to her in that inimitably friendly way of his.
There was a good distance separating us. I had a quarter of a mile or more to walk along that torturous cliff-path before I came up with her and, before I had half accomplished it, Dandy had returned to my side.
"There's a lady along there," said he, nodding his nose in her direction.
"I know—I know," said I, sharply. I think I must have been annoyed that he had reached her and spoken to her first. He is quick to take these sudden tones in my voice, as quick as many a human being. Wherefore, when he heard it then, he dropped back softly to my heels and trotted along behind me. A moment later, I felt that I had been unreasonable, so I looked back over my shoulder and in a cheery way I told him that while I was talking to the lady, he could go and catch rabbits.
"You can do anything you like," said I, "so long as you don't keep jumping on us."
Directly he heard the change of tone in my voice, he started laughing from ear to ear and, taking me without hesitation at my word, he raced off into a clump of furze bushes when by that time I had covered the distance between us and had reached Clarissa's side.
She was wearing a veil; but the whole spirit of the day was still with me. I felt so sure of myself and my adventure that I did not even think to be relieved. When then I took her hand, it came quite easily to me to laugh with the sheer consciousness of it all and I found myself saying—
"This is quite an adventure."
CHAPTER XVII
Not far from the place of our meeting there is a rugged pathway, winding down the steep cliff side to a table of rock below. Your feet must be as sure as the feet of a goat when you venture down this narrow edge of the world; but once you have reached it, still greatly high above the sea, you may sit there like a sea-bird in the sun and never a soul that walks the cliff-path up above will dream of your existence.