The sun struck his nose and rested on his hair, and he awoke. He said “Ugh” and “Ah” very loudly several times, rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, raised his arms above his head and yawned, and then sat up. His eyes rested for a moment lovingly on the map. Parts of it were coloured in chalk, red and yellow and blue, for reasons best known to himself. The sight of it opened unending horizons: sharp white roads curving up through the green and brown into a blue misty distance, the round heaving shoulder of some wind-swept down over which he had tramped as the dusk was falling and the stars came slowly from their hiding-places to watch him, the grey mists rising from some deep valley as the sun rose red and angry—they stretched, those roads and hills and valleys, beyond his room and the sea, for ever and ever. And there were people too, in London, in country towns, in lonely farms and tiny villages; the lines and crosses on the map brought to his mind a thousand histories in which he had played his part.
He looked at Toby. “A swim, old man,” he said; “time for a swim—out we get!” Toby unrolled himself, rubbed his nose on his mat twice like an Eastern Mahommedan paying his devotions, and strolled across to the bed. His morning greeting to his master was always the same, he rolled his eyes, licked his lips with satisfaction, and wagged an ear; then he looked for a moment quite solemnly into his master’s face with a gaze of the deepest devotion, then finally he leapt upon the bed and curled up at his master’s side.
Punch (whose real name, by the way, was David Garrick—I don’t know why I didn’t say so before—he hadn’t the slightest connexion with the actor, because his family didn’t go back beyond his grandfather) stroked a paw and scratched his head. “It’s time we got up and went for a swim, old man. The sun’s been saying so hours ago.” He flung on an overcoat and went out.
The cottage where he lived was almost on the beach. Above it the town rose, a pile of red roofs and smoking chimneys, a misty cloud of pale blue smoke twisted and turned in the air. The world was full of delicious scents that the later day destroyed, and everything behaved as though it were seeing life for the first time; the blue smoke had never discovered the sky before, the waves had never discovered the sand before, the breeze had never discovered the trees before. Very soon they would lose that surprise and would find that they had done it all only yesterday, but, at first, it was all quite new.
Punch and Toby bathed; as they came out of the water they saw Morelli sitting on a rock. Punch sat down on the sand quite unconcernedly and watched the sea. He hadn’t a towel, and so the sun must do instead. Toby, having barked once, sat down too.
“Good morning, Mr. Garrick,” said Morelli.
Punch looked up for a moment. “A fine day,” he said.
Morelli came over to him. He was dressed in a suit of some green stuff, so that against the background of green boughs that fringed the farther side of the little cove he seemed to disappear altogether.
“Good morning, Mr. Garrick,” he said again. “A splendid day for a bathe. I’d have gone in myself only I know I should have repented it afterwards.”
“Yes, sir,” said Punch. “You can bathe ’ere all the year round. In point of fact, it’s ’otter at Christmas than it is now. The sea takes a while to get warm.”