“Oh, you foolish children?” observed Nan, in her staid fashion. But she did not offer the slightest remonstrance, knowing of old that unless Phillis found some safety-valve she would probably wax dangerous. So she called Laddie to her, and held him whining and struggling, for he wanted to stretch his little legs too; thinking a race was good for dogs as well as for girls. But Nan would not hear of it for a moment: he might trip them up and cause another sprained ankle.
“Now, Nan, you must be umpire, and say, One, two, three!” And Nan again obeys, and then watches them with interest. Oh, how pretty it was, if only any one could have seen it, except the crabs and the star-fish, and they never take much notice: the foreground of the summer sea coming up with little purple rushes and a fringe of foam; the yellow sand, jagged, uneven, with salt-water pools here and there; the two girls in their light dresses skimming over the ground with swift feet, skirting the pools, jumping lightly over stones, even climbing a breakwater, then running along another level piece of sand,—Dulce a little behind, but Phillis as erect and sure-footed as Atalanta. 174
Now Nan has lost them, and puts Laddie down and prepares to follow. In spite of her staidness, she would have dearly loved a run too; only she thinks of Dick, and forbears.
Dulce, who is out of breath, fears she must give up the race, and begins to pant and drop behind in earnest, and to wish salt water were fresh, and then to dread the next breakwater as a hopeless obstacle; but Phillis, who is still as fresh as possible, squares her elbows as she has seen athletes do, and runs lightly up to it, unmindful and blissfully ignorant of human eyes behind a central hole.
Some one who is of a classical turn has been thinking of the daughter of Iasus and Clymene, and cries out, “Bravo, Atalanta! but where is Milanion, that he has forgotten the golden apples?” And Phillis, stricken dumb by the question and the sudden apparition of a bearded face behind the breakwater, remains standing as though she were carved in stone.
CHAPTER XXIV.
MOTHERS ARE MOTHERS.
“Mr. Drummond! Oh dear! is one never to be free from pastoral supervision?” muttered Phillis, half sulkily, when she roused from her stupefaction and had breath to take the offensive. And what would he think of her? But that was a question to be deferred until later, when nightmares and darkness and troublesome thoughts harass the unwary soul. “Like a dog, he hunts in dreams,” she might have said to herself, quoting from “Locksley Hall.” But she did nothing of the kind,—only looked at the offending human being with such an outraged dignity in her bearing that Mr. Drummond nearly committed himself by bursting out laughing.