Then there burst upon the view a wonderful surprise.
I was glad he had prepared me, for we had been interested in our talking, and I hadn't paid much attention to the way we were going. Now I did keep my eyes open, and I was well rewarded. The field was a sloping one—sloping upwards, I mean, as we entered it—and till we got to the top of the rising ground we saw nothing but the clear sky above the grass, but then there burst upon the view a wonderful surprise. The coast-line lay before us for a considerable distance at each side. Just below us were the rocky bays or creeks the children had told me of, the sand gleaming yellow and white in the sunshine, for the tide was half way out, though near enough still for us to see the glisten of the foam and the edge of the little waves, as they rippled in sleepily. And farther out the deep purple-blue of the ocean, softening into a misty gray, there, where the sky and the water met or melted into each other. A little to the right rose the smoke of several houses—lazily, for it was a very still day. These houses lay nestled in together, on the way to the shore, and seemed scarcely enough to be called a village; but as we left the field again to rejoin the road, I saw that these few houses were only the centre of it, so to speak, as others straggled along the road in both directions for some way, the church being one of the buildings the nearest to Treluan house.
'It is a beautiful view,' said I, after a moment's silence, as we all stood still at the top of the slope, the children glancing at me, as if to see what I thought of it. 'I've never seen anything approaching to it before, and yet it's a bare sort of country—many wouldn't believe it could be so beautiful with so few trees, but I suppose the sea makes up for a good deal.'
'And it's such a lovely day,' said Master Francis. 'I should say the sun makes up for a good deal. We've lots of days here when it's so gray and dull that the sea and the sky seem all muddled up together. I'm not so very fond of the sea myself. People say it's so beautiful in a storm, and I suppose it is, but I don't care for that kind of beauty, there's something so furious and wild about it. I don't think raging should be counted beautiful. Shouldn't we only call good things beautiful?'
He looked up with a puzzle in his eyes. Master Francis always had thoughts beyond his age and far beyond me to answer.
'I can't say, I'm sure,' I replied. 'It would take very clever people indeed to explain things like that, though there's verses in the Bible that do seem to bear upon it, especially in the Psalms.'
'I know there are, but when it tells of Heaven, it says "there shall be no more sea,"' said Master Francis very gravely. 'And I think I like that best.'
'Dear Francie,' said Miss Lally, taking his hand, as she always did when she saw him looking extra grave, though of course she could not understand what he had been saying.