She rose, glad of the proposed change, for the wind was playing confusion with her hair. Observing her wince, as her left foot touched the ground, Idris said, with a smile:—
"You had better let me carry you."
Lorelie coloured, neither assenting nor opposing. Since Idris had carried her once it would be prudery to resist now, and so, knowing that she must either accept his aid or else crawl to the spot upon her hands and knees, she entrusted herself to his arms, and in this way gained the entrance of the cave, which was of considerable extent, and strewn with logs, planks, and odd pieces of timber.
"Where does all this wood come from?" she asked.
"Wreckage-timber, probably; doubtless placed here by the coast-guard to be used as firing in cold weather. See! here is the hermit's seat you spoke of," said Idris, indicating a piece of rock jutting from the wall of the cave near its entrance. It had been hollowed out by art into the rude resemblance of an armchair, and within this recess Idris placed his companion.
"I hope you dined well before setting out," he said, "for our grotto offers nothing in the shape of commissariat."
"I am somewhat thirsty," replied Lorelie, as she turned her eyes upon a tiny spring of water, which, issuing from a fissure in the wall of the cave, flowed silently down into a depression hollowed out in the floor, just beside the hermit's seat; then, overflowing from the basin into a groove of its own making, the water became lost in an orifice a few feet distant.
"Here is a remedy for thirst," said Idris. "The daily drink of our hermit. 'The waters of Siloah that go softly,' was perhaps his name for it. The eremite's crockeryware having perished, how do you propose to drink?"
"With Nature's cup," smiled Lorelie, curving her hands into the shape of a bowl.
Mindful of her ankle she slid cautiously upon her knees and bent, a charming picture, over the pool.