"Well, I don't sleep in my clothes."
"But don't your things get wet?"
"I wrap 'em in my waterproof.... You won't come up, then, and run down to the shore for a bathe before breakfast?"
"Causton, they'll be dropping on you yet!" Earle had said, almost frightened.
"Well, without the bathe?"
"Oh, I should die!"
And Richenda had gone back to sleep where she might find remedies for her headaches within reach of her hand during the night.
Louie sat on the stile. The sea had a soft bloom, and the sky was of the colour of the whites of a baby's eyes. Bees hummed among the scabious, and blue and sulphur butterflies hovered over the patches of wild thyme. A tramp, sullying the air behind her, crept slowly up to Bristol; a single nodding grass-head near at hand shut her out almost completely. Mazzicombe, down under the hill, was hidden. Louie watched it all, thinking of nothing, or, if of anything, of how sweet it was to relax all her muscles to the point of not stumbling off the stile, and all her mind save that she might still be just conscious that she existed and was Louie Causton....
"Hallo," said a slow, imperturbable voice behind her; "here we are again."
She started a little. Roy Lovenant-Smith was returning with a baulk of old wood over his shoulder.