“Why not? You used to be good-natured, I thought—in Cesarea, ages ago.”
“You are enough to drive the laugh out of a faun,” said the young lady soberly. “Pray sit down again on your sand sofa. I did not know you had been so ill. Put on your hat, Mr. Bayard. Good society does not require ghosts to stand bareheaded at the seacoast in April.”
“I don’t move in good society any longer. I am not expected to know anything about its customs. Sit down beside me, a minute—and I will. No—stay. Perhaps you will take cold? I wish I had some wraps. My coat”—
“When I take your coat”—began the healthy girl. He had already flung his overcoat upon the dry, warm sand. She gave it back to him. Then she saw the color start into his pale face.
“Oh, forgive me!” she said quickly. “I did not mean—Mr. Bayard, I never was ill in my life.”
“Nor I, either, before now,” pleaded Bayard rather piteously.
“Who called it the ‘insolence of health’? I did not mean to be impertinent, if you will take the trouble to believe me. I fail to grasp the situation, that’s all. I am simply obtuse—blunt—blunt as a clam.”
She waved her sun-umbrella dejectedly towards the beach where a solitary clam-digger, a bent, picturesque old man, was seeking his next chowder.
“The amount of it is,” said Miss Carruth more in her usual manner, “that I was taken a little by surprise. You used to look so—different. You are greatly changed, Mr. Bayard. Being a heretic does not agree with you.”
“I have had a little touch of something they call pneumonia down here,” observed Bayard carelessly. “I’ve been out only a few days.”