"Look here, Miss Mallory," said the Lieutenant, with feigned solemnity. "I have to go into Exeter to-morrow to try on some new uniforms, and to-night I must stay at home and help the mater entertain a wretched curate whom she has invited to dinner. But I shall be at large to-morrow evening. What about a prowl along the shore or up the marsh? We might renew hostilities, and get some sort of a notion which of us is really right in the matter of our Christian names. I may change my mind, and come to the conclusion that you are, after all."
"Oh, may you, indeed, Reggie?" replied the girl, and with a roguish laugh she ran away without saying whether or no she would meet him. But he was familiar with his former playmate's impish ways, and it was in sublime confidence that the appointment would be kept that he loitered about on the seafront on the evening of the following day.
Sure enough, a little after nine, when the sunset glow still lingered in the western sky, Miss Enid's white-clad figure was seen threading its way through the loungers on the parade. It was a beautiful evening, and the junior section of residents and visitors were about in plenty. Young men and maidens, hatless and in evening dress, strolled up and down the asphalte side-walk between the coastguard station and the club, for the most part chattering of the handicaps in the forthcoming tennis tournament, while some few exceptions, too busy making eyes at each other for such frivolity, worshipped at the love-god's shrine. Such public worship, however, has ever been considered bad form at Ottermouth, except among septuagenarians and the rosy-cheeked couples who on Sundays "walk out" together in the country lanes.
Perhaps it was because of this unwritten law of the place that Reggie Beauchamp and Enid Mallory, having duly greeted each other with flippant discourtesy, but having the germ of quite another sentiment in their irresponsible hearts, intuitively turned their steps to the further end of the parade, and came to a halt at the spot where the struggle between the feeble efforts of the urban council and the giant forces of nature ceased. In front lay the bank of shingle across the former river's mouth; to the left stretched the sedge-covered, dyke-sected bed of the old estuary.
"Shall we go back to the parade or take a turn up the marsh?" asked Reggie. And then, without waiting for a reply, he added, "By Jingo! Look out to sea. There is a cruiser—the Terrible, I think, or one of her class."
Enid followed the direction of his pointing finger, and in the fast-fading twilight saw the great four-funnelled monster steaming slowly about two miles out at sea. Even as they looked, the big warship became little more than a huge blurred shape, barely discernible in the darkness that was swiftly blotting out land and sea.
"Well, she won't bite, I suppose," said the girl carelessly.
"No, but she might bark," laughed the Lieutenant. "I expect she's out for night practice with her heavy guns—with blank charges, of course."
The young people quickly lost interest in the ship, and, turning aside, struck into the path traversed by Leslie Chermside and Levison on the morning of the preceding day. It was raised above the level of the mud-flats which skirted it on the right; on the other side rose the umbrageous bank of the old water-course, increasing the shadows in which they walked.
Presently Enid's hand stole under her companion's arm, and they glided naturally into the frank comradeship which had prevailed between them long before the mutual banter which they had lately affected, and which was probably due to a desire to conceal the first stirrings of something stronger than a boy-and-girl attachment. They were both of the age when young folk are supremely susceptible, but have a self-conscious dread of being thought so. Out here on the marsh, in the kindly mantle of a moonless summer night, they could enjoy the pleasure of propinquity without fear of being laughed at.