But he had soon left the park behind, and came out upon the low sandhills that stretched away for at least a quarter of a mile towards the margin of the sea. The sun shone very bright and warm here; the soft sand crumbled beneath his feet; and the sea-gulls walked tamely about, and looked at him with a sort of impudent assurance before they took wing. Bertie was fond of this spot; he could not have said why, for something in its level desolation always made him a little sad; yet the sight of the boundless waste of heaving water and the arid stretches of pale sand had an odd fascination for him, and he would have felt sorrowful had a day passed without his visiting at least once the scene that exercised a powerful sway over his imagination.
As he wandered down towards the margin of the sea, a little black figure jumped up from a recumbent position upon the sand, and David and Bertie stood face to face.
They looked very different indeed now, the two children who had once been almost like little brothers for a few brief days of their life: David, with his pale blue eyes, straw-colored hair, indeterminate face, and coarse clothing, and Bertie, dark-eyed, dark-haired, clad in velvet, and with that nameless air about him that bespoke birth and breeding as no costliness of apparel could do. The boy’s face was aglow with intelligence and eager welcome, and its expression was so utterly different, in its refinement and sweetness, from the awkward, clumsy pleasure painted upon that of the fisherman’s boy, that it was no great wonder, perhaps, if David himself had some dim perception of it.
He stopped short and gazed at Bertie for a full minute in silence, and then said, heaving a great sigh,—
“Eh, but thee is so beautiful! I do love thee!”
Bertie smiled and took both of David’s hands in his.
“I love you too,” he answered. “What are you doing, David?”
“I be learning my Sunday lesson. I goes to school mornings before church; but I don’t go afternoons. I come out here and learns my lesson. Does anybody give thee Sunday lessons to learn?”
Bertie’s hand went up for a moment to his head.
“Not here,” he answered, after a moment’s hesitation. “I should like to learn yours with you, David.”