"Mignonette, I am of an impatient disposition."
"Yes I know it."
"Is it to be your first wifely undertaking to cure me?" he said, laughing.—"It takes time to put thoughts into action," said Faith, blushing.—"Not all thoughts, Mignonette."
She coloured beautifully; but anything more pure and sweet than those first wifely kisses of Faith could not be told. Did he know, had he felt, all the love and allegiance they had so silently and timidly spoken? She had reason to think so.
CHAPTER XLIV.
In a low whitewashed room, very clean though little and plain, where the breeze blew in fresh from the sea, Faith found herself established Friday afternoon. Mr. Linden had promised to show her the surf, and so had brought her down to a little village, long ago known to him, on the New England shore; where the people lived by farming and fishing, and no hotel attracted or held an influx of city life. It was rather late in the day, for the journey had been in part off the usual route of railway and steam, and therefore had been longer if not wearier. But when Faith had got rid of the dust, Mr. Linden came to her door to say that it would be half an hour to supper, and ask if she was too tired to walk down to the beach.
The shore was but a few hundred yards from the little farmhouse; green grass, with interrupting rocks, extending all the way. Faith hardly knew what she was corning to till she reached the brink. There the precipitous rocks rose sheer a hundred feet from the bottom, and at the bottom, down below her, a narrow strip of beach was bordered with the billowy crest and foam of the sea. Nothing but the dark ocean and the illimitable ocean line beyond; there was not even a sail in sight this evening; in full uninterrupted power and course, from the broad east, the swells of the sea rolled in and broke—broke, with their graceful, grand monotony.
The beach was narrow at height of tide; now the tide was out. Fishermen's boats were drawn up near to the rocks, and steep narrow pathways along and down the face of them allowed the fishermen to go from the top to the bottom.
"Can't we get down there?" said Faith, when she had stood a minute looking silently. Her face showed an eager readiness for action.
"Can you fly, little bird?"—"Yes—as well as the fishermen can!"