“Dad,” she asked Cap’n Smiley, “does the Duneswoman know everything about the beach?”
“I think she does, pretty nearly,” the keeper told her. “Do you see much of her?”
“Only her head and arms. Sometimes she reaches out her arm to me.”
“I meant, do you see her often?”
“Oh, yes! Except when I’m with Mrs. Biggles. Mrs. Biggles says she never has seen her. She says I ought not to see her and mustn’t pay any ’tention to her,” Mermaid informed him.
“Perhaps that’s because Mrs. Biggles never sees her and doesn’t know how nice she is.”
“Just what I said.” Mermaid bit a plum and made a wry face. She wanted to ask Dad more about the Duneswoman.
That was a ghost only he and she had seen—a lovely Face and Arm that sometimes floated for an instant on the dark summer ocean, looked toward you ... and was gone.
VIII
A golden October when, for days, the sun shone and the beach was veiled with faintly coloured mists; when the crack of duck hunters’ guns came from over the bay; when the ocean advanced on the smoothly sanded shore in long and majestic curves, so that to stand upon the dunes and look at it was like looking down a flight of steps of boundless width.... The Atlantic made itself into a glittering staircase leading straight to the sun.