He was quick enough in grasping at a pretext for keeping me yet another day. Yesterday the wind having suddenly abated in the night, there was quite a bevy of little fishing-boats sailing merrily away. And the causeway at low water was quite visible. As we looked out I know the same idea came to both our minds, though there was no word between us. At last it was I who spoke. "The crossing is quite safe," said I. And I added, as he answered nothing, "I almost wish now it was not. How quick the time has gone by, here!"
His countenance when I looked up was darker. He kept his eyes fixed in the distance. At last he said in a low voice:
"Yes, I suppose it is high time you should go back."
"I am sure I don't wish it," I said quite frankly—he is not the sort of man with whom one would ever think of minauderie, "but Madeleine will be miserable about me."
"And so you would really care to stop here," said he, with a smile of wonder on his face, "if it were not for that reason?"
"Naturally I would," said I. "I feel already as cosy as a tame cat here. And if it were not for Madeleine, poor little Madeleine, who must be breaking her heart!—But then how can I go back?—I have no wraps and only one shoe?"
His face had cleared again. He was walking up and down in his usual way, whilst I hopped back, with more limping than was at all necessary, to my favourite arm-chair.
"True, true," he said, as if speaking to himself, "you cannot walk, with one shoe and a bandaged foot. And your clothes are too thin for the roundabout sea journey in this cold wind. This is what we shall do, child," he went on, coming up to me with a sage expression that struggled with his evident eager desire. "René shall go off, as soon as the tide permits, carrying the good news of your safety to your sister, and bring back some warm things for you to wear to-morrow morning, and I shall write to Rupert to send a carriage, to wait for you on the strand."
And so, pleased like two children who have found a means of securing a further holiday, we wrote both our letters. I wonder whether it occurred to Sir Adrian, as it did to me, that, if we had been so very anxious that I should be restored to the care of Pulwick with the briefest delay, I might have gone with René that same day, wrapped up in a certain cloak which had done good warming service already; and that, as René had constructed with his cunning hands a sufficient if not very pretty sandal for my damaged foot out of some old piece of felt, I might have walked from the beach to the fishing village; and that there, no doubt, a cart or a donkey might have conveyed me home in triumph.
Perhaps it did not occur to him; and certainly I had no desire to suggest it on my side.