"No; none at all. And you, Gertrude?"
"I haven't made any particular plan."
"Then suppose you and Candace take a walk on the Cliffs. I have to take Marian to the dentist; but Cannie has not seen the sea yet, except at a distance, and you both ought to have a good exercise in the fresh air, for I am almost sure it will rain by to-morrow. You might take her to the beach, Gertrude, and come home by Marine Avenue."
"Very well, mamma; I will, certainly," said Gertrude. But there was a lack of heartiness in her tone. Like most very young girls she had a strong sense of the observant eyes of Mrs. Grundy, and she did not at all approve of the brown gingham. "I wonder why mamma can't wait till she has made Cannie look like other people," she was saying to herself.
There was no help for it, however. None of Mrs. Gray's children ever thought of disputing her arrangements for a moment; so the two girls set forth, Cannie in the despised gingham, and Gertrude in a closely fitting suit of blue serge, with a large hat of the same blue, which stood out like a frame round the delicate oval of her face, and set off the feathery light hair to perfection.
Their way for a little distance was down a sort of country lane, which was the short cut to the Cliffs. It ended in a smooth greensward at the top of a wall of broken rocks; and, standing on the edge, Cannie called out, "Oh!" with a sense of sudden surprise and freedom.
Before her was a bay of the softest blue, with here and there a line of white surf, where long rollers were sweeping in toward the distant beach. Opposite, stretched a point of land rising into a low hill, which shone in the yellow afternoon sun; and from its end the unbroken sea stretched away into a lovely distance, whose color was like that of an opal, and which had no boundary but a mysterious dim line of faintly tinted sky. Sails shone against the moving water; gulls were dipping and diving; a flock of wild-ducks with glossy black heads swam a little away out from the shore. Beyond the point which made the other arm of the little bay rose an island, ramparted by rocks, over which the surf could be seen to break with an occasional toss of spray. There was a delicious smell of soft salty freshness, and something besides,—a kind of perfume which Candace could not understand or name.
"Oh, what is it; what can it be?" she said.
"What?"
"The smell. It is like flowers. Oh, there it is again!"