"You are not well, my dear!" Lady Twentifold exclaimed, for she often addressed me kindly thus, when strangers were not present; chiefly perhaps from my fancied likeness to the dear child she had lost. "That canvassing has been too much for you. You are not intended for public life. I wish Roly would not force you into it so. Now, candidly, which do you enjoy the most; such a day as yesterday, or a day like this?"
With perfect truth, I answered—"Oh, such a day as this, a million times! But, I am as well as I can be, and wonderfully happy, I assure you. May I come, and look for shells with you?"
"To be sure you may. But don't forget your promise to my loves of burrow-ducks. You had better begin, before the tide comes up. Here are the flat trowel, and the long flag basket. Mind, the least touch brings them off, if you take them by surprise. But if you let them know that you want them, they won't come, without being knocked to pieces. My little dears were taken from their nest near here. And the scenery they prefer to everything, is limpets. Now, Laura, if you mean to try another sketch, I think this corner of the rocks, will be the best place for you, according to the way the light falls now. Tommy will follow me, I dare say; as soon as he has done his duty to the little ducks."
This arrangement was not quite the one I should have made, if the ordering had been left to me. Greatly as I admired, and loved "my dear lady," I certainly should have sent her shell-hunting; while I stayed in the corner, where the light fell so nicely, to offer to the nascent work of art the only criticism that ever is judicious—downright, thick-and-thin, admiration. However, not being the marshal of the forces, I made off, with tremendous zeal, to get a stock of limpets.
But, whether the tide was coming in too fast; or whether it was going out, at a pace to make one anxious about the welfare of the sea; or whether the limpets took to jumping, like sand-hoppers, carrying their rocks along with them; or whether there was no strange phenomenon at all, save the one that is strangest yet surest of all—the result, (which I am not in a position to explain, even if it concerned any salaried tide-waiter) was to fetch me very suddenly back to that corner; with the loves of the burrow-ducks left to woo the waves.
My own love was gazing, and, as I hoped, dreaming, about something that her pencil could not trace. That little reed of so many whispers, with the secret of Midas inside it, was lying on her block; and the only line it made, was its one true production—its own shadow. But who, that ever moved it, and made it far more eloquent than any poet's tongue, could have granted to it the expression of the face, now leaning over it?
What sympathy have rocks? Ever since they first began, the chief object of their life has been to knock human beings (generally on the shins, and knees) and to petrify them in a cave, at every opportunity, and to keep them from getting away from the sea, when the poor pulse is being beaten out of them. Typical are they of all that is stubborn, rugged, and relentless; and now one of them fetched me a knock on the knee (while my presence of mind was with Laura) that sent me down into a gulley of sand, with my limpet-trowel running into me. This was a pointed steel implement, such as bricklayers use; and my escape was narrow. A heavy man must have had a very heavy wound, and perhaps a fatal one; for the handle of the trowel struck the ground before me, while the steel was pointing at my breast. But Nature has allowed me some compensation for the short weight unfairly served out to me,—especially quickness of eye, and of body. In a word, what there is of me is good stuff—though not much to boast of, as you will remind me.
"Oh, what a fearful thing! What a very dreadful thing! Darling Tommy, are you quite dead again? You are always doing it, for the good of others. Oh, put your poor head up, and let me look at you."
"That is not at all the right thing," I answered, after a groan or two, to ensure attention; "the proper thing is, for me to look at you. And that is how I got into all this trouble."
"How good of you, Tommy! How very good of you! But do let me see, where your dreadful wound is. I won't be afraid of it, I promise you I won't; because you got it all for my sake. You are always getting wounds, for my sake."