“I wonder what you are thinking about, my little friend,” said the new comer, kindly. “I know from your face that your thoughts are happy thoughts?”
“Pretty foolish ones, I guess you'd call them!” laughed Nan, for there was something about the stranger that at once won her confidence.
“I'm not so sure of that,” he answered; “but a stranger has no right to ask you what they were, so good-bye, my little dreamer.”
“I wish you would not go,” said Nan, sitting up and smoothing out her dress; “I would like to talk to you, because I think you look like a minister, and I never spoke to a real minister before.”
“Well, you shall now,” he answered, sitting down beside her, “for you have guessed rightly, and for that matter there is nothing the minister would rather do than talk to you for a while.”
There was a little pause, and then Nan asked hesitatingly, as though she feared to seem rude, “You don't belong about here, do you?”
“No, but I almost wish I did. I love the sea with all my heart, so that I have hard work to keep from saying something about it in every sermon I preach. But if I do not belong about here, it is very certain that you do. You must have lived by the ocean week in and week out, to get that shade of blue into your eyes.”
“That's what Reginald says!” laughed Nan.
“And who is Reginald?”