"No, dear. I have been half over the world, knocking about east and west since I was twelve years old."
"Fancy that! I never knew. Your life must have been an interesting one."
"Hardly. It was not exactly commonplace; but it certainly wasn't picturesque in any of its phases. I went to Australia when I was quite a lad—worked my way before the mast, and made a little money out there. I came home, and the demon of invention got hold of me. I conceived some wondrous piece of agricultural mechanism which was to make my name and my fortune, over which I spent every farthing I had scraped together. Well, it proved to be a mere worthless abortion, and the discovery was a smart blow to my conceit and my energy. I lost heart for a time, went to the States, where I joined the Confederate Army, fought for two years—it was the time of the struggle for emancipation—and, when it was over, I steered further west, to California, where I did fairly at mining."
"Why, you have been a Jack-of-all-trades, Tom—sailor, soldier, inventor, miner, manufacturer—what else?"
"That's the whole list. I found at last that liquid-manufacturing paid the best; so I stuck to it. Vitriol gave me my decisive lift. Now, Addie, I will not allow that disdainful little sniff, for vitriol lies very close to my bosom just now. Vitriol bought me Nutsgrove, and Nutsgrove bought me you, and you bought—"
"Armstrong of Kelvick, is that you in the flesh? What can have tempted you into the giddy haunts of fashion, so far from your savory chimney-pots, my dear fellow?"
"Like the man in the Scriptures, 'I married a wife.' Addie"—to his wife, who stands rather shyly in the background—"let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Henderson."
They leave the pier and walk to the hotel, remaining for a few minutes talking under the porch; then the two men return to the pier for a smoke. Addie watches them disappear, hatching a little moonlit scamper on her own account to a solitary part of the shore, where she can plunge her free hands and hot face into the rippling water. Alas, woman proposes, but man disposes! She has just cleared the last step of the terrace, when she meets her husband face to face.
"Addie, I just ran back to see that you did not remain standing in that draught. Where are you going, child?"—and in an accent of intense surprise.
"Oh, nowhere in particular—at least, only to the edge of the sea for a moment!" she answers, a little hurriedly.