'Just watch it,' she continued, pointing to a crevice in the rocks below, 'the water is ever so far away down, and then it rises gradually higher and higher until it reaches the edge with a "plop" and runs over, and then it sinks again right down until it leaves the long wrack at the sides hanging clear out of the water and dripping down into it like dead water snakes, till the next wave comes and flushes them into life again,' and she bobbed her head gravely in time with the rhythmical heave and subsidence of the recurrent surges, glinting the sunlight from her bright gold hair.
'Yes, that shows a very heavy swell. It is the distant muttering of a storm far out in the Atlantic. A bad sign for your bathe. In fact I don't think you ought to bathe at all to-day, Miss Selina. These ground-swells are very dangerous, and the sea looks angry to-day. Just notice how dirty and disturbed the water is with the sand stirred up from its depths. That fringe of seaweed too along the tidal mark is ominous.'
'Dangerous, nonsense,' replied the girl. 'Why, the sea is as calm as a mill-pond, and I never saw a lovelier day. You're becoming a perfect old woman, Dr. Seymour. I'm sure even Mr. Fairchild doesn't think it dangerous, now, do you?'
'It certainly appears calm enough to me,' said the person thus appealed to.
Seymour flushed and retorted shortly with a slight sneer.
'Fairchild doesn't know the sea well enough to be afraid of it. He speaks out of the depths of his ignorance. But a wilful woman must have her way. So I'll leave you to your bathe. Good morning!' and the two men turned away along the top of the cliff, while the girls ran gayly down the sloping path that led to the little cove below. They had not gone far before Seymour recovered from his temporary ill-humor, and halted.
'I'm not easy in my mind about those girls,' he said. 'A ground-swell like that is more treacherous than the nature of our Irish friends beyond. I think we ought to wait here within earshot of them,' and they both sat down upon the sod bank with their backs to the sea.
For a time there was a moody silence, which the clergyman broke at last, enviously, kicking his heels against the sod ditch.
'Of course I've got no chance against you. I can see that. And I think it's hardly fair.'
'Eh! why! what!' ejaculated the other, starting out of a reverie.