"Now, dearest, we must brave it out; go to the coastguard's hut, and"—he pointed to an oilskin satchel which he had worn across his shoulders—"buy him."
Leonie cast on her lover a glance of awe and pride and worship. He seemed to be God and fairy tale miraculously combined. She believed herself to be treading Elysium as they took their way to the humble stone cabin occupied by the coastguard and his son, the only inhabitants of the island. Her young brain reeled with the intoxication of freedom. How much rosier than any she had before seen were the sea-pinks that flowered their way; how surprisingly azure the common bluebells that nodded and waved and seemed, as they passed, to be ringing chimes to celebrate her happiness. And even the potatoes that grew in the little garden plot where this coastguard Crusoe toiled, had they not a world of wonder in their blossoms, in their golden eyes, which watched and watched and glowed, as she believed, before the triumphant coming of their Love?
A rude hobbledehoy of the St Malo peasant class opened the hut door and stared. Then he said something in his opaque patois which only Leonie could elucidate. She had often imitated the vulgar of her race from sheer plaisanterie.
She replied in the same key, and, seeing that the youth comprehended, the artist prompted a duologue.
"He says," Leonie began by explaining, "the coastguard is ill, he cannot leave him to go ashore, and does not know what to do. He refuses to take us back in his boat."
"He is under the delusion we want to go back? Good! Give him money and say we will stop here and attend his sick man."
This explanation ensured their entry. The boy was evidently relieved of a burden. The hut was composed merely of two rooms, in one of which a weather-beaten old man was evidently bedridden from pain. He looked askance at the two bathers, but at the same time his son put a coin into the sufferer's hand. The youth, with the acumen of his kind, understood the relative value of eloquence and action.
"Clothes—food," Leonie translated at her lover's request.
The boy shook his head. Then his eyes fell on the rough suit belonging to his father which was slung across the end of the bed.
"That might do for me," the artist cogitated, with wrinkled brow, "but for you?" He looked seriously at his sweetheart. The boy's eyes followed his glance and read it. The sick man turned in his bed, groaned, and wondered when these troublesome people were going away.