CHAPTER XXVIII
LAURA UNDERSTANDS
Thus she remained, holding to a silver birch, leaning out a little toward the chasm. Up from the depths echoed a gurgling roar as the white fury drenched and belabored the gray, sheer wall, then fell back, hissing.
For a moment Laura peered down, held by the boy’s encircling arm. She looked abroad upon the sun-shining waters flecked with far, white boats and smudged with steamer-smoke. Then she breathed deep and lifted up her face toward the gold filigree of sun and leaf, and sighed:
“Oh, it’s wonderful, Hal! I never even guessed it could be anything like this!”
“Wonderful isn’t the name for it, Laura,” he answered. He pointed far. “See the lighthouse? And Cape Ann in the haze? And the toy boats? Everything and everybody’s a toy now except just you and me. We’re the only real people. I wish it were really so, don’t you?”
“Why, Hal? What would you do if it were?”
“Oh,” he answered with that heart-warming smile of his, “I’d take you in a yacht, Laura, away off to some of those wonderful places the Oriental poems tell about. We’d sail away ‘through the Silken Sea,’ and ‘Beyond the Wind,’ wherever that is. Wouldn’t you like to go there with me, dear?”