Chris Lisle was not the man to hesitate. He threw aside his pipe, rang for the breakfast things to be cleared away, glanced at the looking-glass to see if he appeared decent, and stuck a straw hat on his crisp, curly hair.
“Not half such a good-looking chap as the yachtsman,” he said, with a half laugh. “Glad of it. Wouldn’t be such a smooth-looking dandy for the world. Why, hang it!” he said with a laugh, as he strode along by the rocky beach in the full tide of his manly vigour, “I could eat a fellow like that. I never thought of it before,” he continued to himself, as he walked on. “Fortune-hunter! I can’t be called a poor man. Two hundred and fifty a year. Why, I never felt short of money in my life. Always seemed to be enough for everything I wanted. Bah! nobody but little midges up there could ever say such a thing as that.”
A peculiar change seemed just then to be taking place in Chris Lisle. The moment before he was swinging easily along, giving a friendly nod here and there to fishermen and loungers, who saluted him with a smile and a “Morn, Mr Chris, sir,” the next he had grown stiff and rigid, as he saw a dingy pulled in to the landing-place some distance ahead, and Glyddyr leap out, the distance fitting so that the young men had to pass each other, which they did with a short nod of recognition.
“Swell!” muttered Chris contemptuous, as he strode on.
“Bumpkin!” thought Glyddyr, as he went in the other direction, and he laughed softly to himself.
A short distance farther along the cliff road Chris came suddenly upon a figure in deep mourning, and he stopped short, with his whole manner changing once more.
“Ah, Mrs Woodham,” he said, in a low voice full of commiseration, “I have not been up to the quarry, but I had not forgotten an old friend. Can I be of any service to you?”
The woman shook her head.
“Don’t do that,” he said kindly. “They will not keep you, but recollect, Sarah, that we are very old friends, and I shall be hurt if you want money and don’t come to me.”
“God bless you, Master Chris,” said the woman hoarsely; “but don’t keep me now.”