"Is that all you are about?"
"You were anxious about your supper, Mr. Linden—Are you ready for it?"
"Much more ready than anxious, Miss Faith."
"How do you like the shore to-day?" said Faith, dropping her voice, and giving a glance of her eye to the fair, cool sunlight colours on the water and shore and shipping—fresh as the very sea-breeze itself, and glittering as the water's thousand mirrors could make them.
He turned and looked again, drawing in the breeze with a deep breath that more than answered her question.
"How do you like this?" he said, handing her through the window a little miniature tree of red sea-weed. Then, while she examined it, he repeated,—
"'When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox,
Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,
Laden with sea-weed from the rocks;
"'From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,
In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing
Surges of San Salvador;
"'From the tumbling surf that buries
The Orkneyan skerries,
Answering the hoarse Hebrides;
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting
Spars, uplifting
On the desolate, rainy seas;—
"'Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless main;
Till in shelter d coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,
All have found repose again.'"