She raised her little foot, and, with a spiteful stamp, brought her heel down upon poor Tennyson, sinking him deep into the spongy sand!
“Oh, Julia, you’ve spoilt the book?”
“There’s nothing in it to spoil. Waste print and paper. There’s more poetry in one of these pretty seaweeds that lie neglected on the sand—far more than in a myriad of such worthless volumes. Let it lie!”
The last words were addressed to Keziah, who, startled from her slumber, had stooped to pick up the trampled volume.
“Let it lie, till the waves sweep over it and bear it into oblivion; as the waves of Time will wash out the memory of its author. Oh, for one true—one real poet!”
At this moment Cornelia started to her feet; not from anything said by her cousin, but simply because the waves of the Atlantic were already stealing around her skirts. As she stood erect, the water was dripping from them.
The sketcher regretted this interruption of her task; the picture was but half completed; and it would spoil it to change the point of view.
“No matter,” she muttered, closing her sketch-book, “we can come again to-morrow. You will, won’t you, Julia, to oblige me?”
“And myself miss. It’s the very thing, this little plunge sans façon. I haven’t enjoyed anything like it since landing on the island of—of—Aquidnec. That, I believe, is the ancient appellation. Come, then, let us be off! To-day, for a novelty, I shall dine with something resembling an appetite.”
Keziah having wrung out the bathing-dresses and tied them in a bundle, the three prepared to depart.