The path to the light-house led through a patch of bayberry bushes. Winifred stooped, as she passed, and gathered a handful, which she crushed in both hands, taking in a deep breath of their spicy aroma.
"Are they so good?" Flint asked, smiling at her childish enjoyment.
"Try and see!" she answered, holding them out to him in the cup of her joined hands.
Flint bent his face over them for an instant. Then Winifred suddenly dropped her hands and shook the fragrant leaves to the four winds. Flint smiled again, for her gesture said as plainly as words: "Here I am being friendly with this man, to whom I intended to be as frigid as an iceberg."
Flint responded as if she had spoken.
"Do you never forgive?" he asked.
"No," answered Winifred, impetuously. "I never forgive; but I have a horrid facility for forgetting."
"Cherish it!" exclaimed her companion. "It is the foundation of many of the Christian graces."
As they drew nearer the light-house, they felt the salt sea-wind strong in their faces. The [Pg 117] bluff was so gale-swept that the trees, few, small, and scrubby, had caught a slant to westward, and the scanty vegetation clung timidly to the ground, like some tiny state whose existence depends upon its humility. From the edge of the bluff rose the light-house,—a round stone building, dazzling in its coat of whitewash. Far up in the air its plate-glass windows gleamed in the morning sun.
The keeper was standing in the open door, and cheerfully consented to show the visitors over the premises. Loneliness is a great promoter of hospitality.