"Mamma makes believe that it is the Spice Islands," answered Gertrude, indifferently, "or else Madeira. You know there is nothing between us and the coast of Africa except islands."
"Really and truly? How wonderful!"
"Well, I don't see how it is so very wonderful. It just happens so. I suppose there are plenty of sea-side places where they can say the same thing."
"Perhaps,—but I never saw any sea-coast but this. It is all new to me."
"I suppose so," responded Gertrude, with a little yawn. She looked to right and to left, fearing that some acquaintance might be coming to see her in company with this rather shabby little companion. "Would you like to walk up the Cliffs a little way, or shall we go down to the beach?" she asked.
"Oh, let us just go as far as that point," said Candace, indicating where, to the right, past a turnstile, a smooth gravel path wound its way between the beautifully kept borders of grass. The path ran on the very edge of the Cliff, and the outer turf dipped at a steep incline to where the sharp rock ran down perpendicularly, but to the very verge it was as fine and as perfectly cut as anywhere else. Candace wondered who held the gardeners and kept them safe while they shaved the grass so smoothly in this dangerous spot, but she did not like to ask. Gertrude's indifferent manner drove her in upon herself and made her shy.
A hundred feet and more below them the sea was washing into innumerable rocky fissures with a hollow booming sound. The cliff-line was broken into all sorts of bold forms,—buttresses and parapets and sharp inclines, with here and there a shallow cave or a bit of shingly beach. Every moment the color of the water seemed to change, and the soft duns and purples of the horizon line to grow more intense. Candace had no eyes but for the sea. She scarcely noticed the handsome houses on her right hand, each standing in its wide lawn, with shrubberies and beds of dazzling flowers. Gertrude, on the contrary, scarcely looked at the sea. It was an old story to her; and she was much more interested in trying to make out people she knew at the windows of the houses they passed, or on their piazzas, and in speculating about the carriages which could be seen moving on the distant road.
"How good it is of the people who own the places to let everybody go through them!" exclaimed Candace, when it was explained to her that the Cliff walk was a public one.
"Oh, they can't help themselves. There is a right of way all round the Island, and nobody would be allowed to close it. Some owners grumble and don't like it a bit; but mamma says it is one of the best things in Newport, and that it would be a great injury to the place to have it taken away. The Cliff walk is very celebrated, you know. Lots of people have written things about it."
"Oh, I should think they would. It is the most beautiful place I ever saw."