"I did, all the same," she answered; "and now I'm going to cook them—some of them at least."
"Yourself? Cook them yourself? No!" he cried in admiration. Cooking was an accomplishment he honoured.
"If you'll come out after your tea, I'll leave the back-gate ajar, and you can slip into the wood-house; and I'll bring you a whiting on toast, all hot and brown."
With such an inducement, Sammy was in good time. Beth found him sitting contentedly on a heap of sticks, waiting for the feast. She had brought the whiting out with a cover over it, hot and brown, as she had promised; and Sammy's mouth watered when he saw it.
"What a jolly girl you are, Beth!" he exclaimed.
But Beth was not so much gratified by the praise as she might have been. The vision and the dream were upon her that evening, her nerves were overwrought, and she was yearning for an outlet for ideas that oppressed her. She stood leaning against the door-post, biting a twig; restless, dissatisfied; but not knowing what she wanted.
When Sammy had finished the whiting, he remembered Beth, and asked what she was thinking about.
"I'm not thinking exactly," she answered, frowning intently in the effort to find expression for what she had in her consciousness. "Things come into my mind, but I don't think them, and I can't say them. They don't come in words. It's more like seeing them, you know, only you don't see them with your eyes, but with something inside yourself. Do you know what it is when you are fishing off the rocks, and there is no breaking of waves, only a rising and falling of the water; and it comes swelling up about you with a sort of sob that brings with it a whiff of fresh air every time, and makes you take in your breath with a sort of sob too, every time—and at last you seem to be the sea, or the sea seems to be you—it's all one; but you don't think it."
Sammy looked at her in a blank, bewildered way. "I like it best when you tell stories, Beth," he said, under the impression that all this incomprehensible stuff was merely a display for his entertainment. "Come and sit down beside me and tell stories."
"Stories don't come to me to-night," said Beth, with a tragic face. "Do you remember the last time we were on the sands—oh! I keep feeling—it was all so—peaceful, that was it. I've been wondering ever since what it was, and that was it—peaceful;