“Oh no, miss,” said the woman, shaking her head. “I never heard of no such name as that before. I’ve got one with ‘Thomas’ on it, and ‘Ada,’ and ‘Susan.’”
Loveday hesitated a moment; then, “I’ll take ‘Thomas,’” she said. “You see,” she explained to her mother when they got outside, “if I had chosen ‘Ada’ or ‘Susan,’ people would have thought it was my own real name, but they can’t think I am called ‘Thomas.’”
“I don’t suppose people have much time for thinking about little girls and the names on their buckets,” said Mrs. Carlyon quietly.
“No, not people, mummy, but boys and girls have. They have lots of time, and they notice everything.”
Armed with her spade and her scarlet bucket, Loveday walked on quite cheerfully to Bessie’s house. From the station it had looked quite close, only just across a green, and along a strip of level road and a little bit of beach, and there you were. But the country just there was flat and deceptive; the road wound and curved, and they found it quite a longish walk by the time they had passed the green and followed the windings of the road, and crossed the stretch of sands. But there they were at last, and there was Bessie out to welcome them, and Aaron, too, though he disappeared behind his mother’s skirts as soon as the strangers came really close.
Loveday thought him a very funny little boy, and not at all pretty. He had very round red cheeks, and a snub nose, and big dark eyes; his hair was dark, too, and quite straight, and cut very close to his head. Loveday looked at him with the greatest interest and curiosity. He was very different from what she had expected; for one thing, he was older and more manly.
“He is like a boy, not a baby,” she said to herself, and felt a little disappointed.
She had thought she was to have had a play-fellow whom she could have “mothered” and managed a little. But she soon found out her mistake. Aaron Lobb was not at all a baby, nor did he think himself one or allow others to do so. He was a sturdy little fellow, and full of a knowledge of the sea and the tides, and boats, and shells, and fishing, which to Loveday seemed simply amazing, and clever beyond words.
When they had all talked a little, Bessie led the way into the house, and Loveday thought it was the most interesting, funny, and charming house she had ever seen in her life. It stood back from the beach, close under the towering cliff, and was a long low house, only one storey high, with big windows, and a porch over the door, and a verandah on each side of the door, and it was painted white, all but the window-frames and the doors, and they were green.
Bessie explained that it had been built by a gentleman who lived in a big house on the top of the cliff. He had had it built years ago for his boatman to live in, “and there is the path he had made for the man to go up and down by to the big house.”