'It's very good of you to have met me, Ambrose.'
'But very unnecessary?'
Mr. Severn laughed consciously, but re-covered himself by spreading his broad palm below his nostrils, and smoothing, with a slow downward movement, the close-cut moustache and beard that concealed his lips and chin. It was a new habit, but the growth also was new, and Ambrose was surprised to find that it took ten years from his age.
'Well, you know I told you not to meet me.'
'You did, and you don't say for civility's sake what you don't mean. There are some folk who believe in a system of formal introductions in Heaven itself. If you'd wished for company to St. Brelade's you would have left the point to my notions of propriety. However, I'll reassure you. I am going into town with the returning train.'
'I'll wait and see you off.'
'And do as you please about driving. If you prefer to walk, the dog-cart will wait for me.'
'Thanks, I should prefer to walk,' said Mr. Severn.
They had reached the end of the platform and now turned back towards the bay. Its waves were tossing with spray-crested edges into which gulls with the sun on their wings were dipping. In the distance a vista of sun-rays streamed over St. Helier's, lying low along the shore with its fortified heights in shadow against the blackness of a storm sweeping up from the West. It was high tide, and Elizabeth Castle was surrounded by a rolling sea. A curve of yellow sand, with here and there a martello tower, marked the coast-line. The air was full of the rush of the waves and the sough of a rising wind.
'If ever I marry, I don't think I shall act on your experience of the previous forty hours,' said Ambrose Piton, as they strolled back to the train with a few more leisurely people. 'A drive of five miles from your Yorkshire moors at Old Lafer to the nearest station, Wonston, I suppose—a rush down England to Southampton, ten hours' pitching in a dirty sea, by our caterpillar of a train to St. Aubin's here, and finally a three miles' walk. By Jove, you must be feeling rather done up.'