Babs had been watching for a man in a glittering oilskin, very anxiously, too, with her little face close to the glass, when a bigger wave than any she had yet seen rolled green and spumy and swiftly across the boulders, till meeting the resistance offered by the cliff it rose into the air for twenty feet at least, then broke like a waterfall on the asphalt path which was dignified by the name of esplanade.
No wonder she rushed back from the window, and now stood trembling by her father’s side.
He took her gently on his knee.
Though five years have elapsed since the night they had visited mother’s tree, and she is now eight years of age, she is but a little thing. Ay, and fragile.
As she sits there, with one arm about his neck, he looks at her, and talks to her tenderly. She has her mother’s eyes.
But how lonely he would be, he cannot help thinking, if anything happened to his little Nelda—to Babs. The thought causes him to shiver as he sits there in his easy-chair by the fire, for chill is the breeze that blows from off the sea to-night.
“Daddy!”
“Yes, dear.”
“To-morrow, when it comes, will make it just three years since Ransey went to sea.”
“Three years? Yes, Babs, so it will. Oh, how quickly the time has flown! And how good your memory is, darling!”