"Can you draw, Mr. Digby?"
"Yes, a little."
Again Rotha was all absorbed in what lay before and around her; getting unconscious education through her eyes, as they received for the first time the images of so many new things. To the people on board she gave scarcely any heed at all.
Arrived at Brighton, Mr. Digby's first care was to give his charge and himself some refreshment. He took Rotha to a hotel and ordered a simple dinner. Then he desired to have a little wagon harnessed up, and putting the delighted girl into it, he drove to the sea shore and let her feast her eyes on the incoming waves and breaking surf. He himself was full of one thought, waiting for the moment when he could say to her what he had to say; but he was forced to wait a good while. He had made a mistake, he found, in choosing this precise direction for their drive. Rotha's overwhelming pleasure and entranced absorption for some time could not be broken in upon. She was too utterly happy to notice how different was her friend's absorption from her own; unless with a vague, passing perception, which she could not dwell upon.
At last her friend asked her if she would like a run upon the sand, the tide being then out. He drove up to a straggling bit of fence, tied his horse, and lifted Rotha out; who immediately ran down to the narrow beach and as near to the water as she dared; there stood still and looked. There was but a gentle surf that day, with the ebb tide; but to Rotha it was a scene of unparalleled might and majesty. She was drinking in pleasure, as one can at fourteen, with all the young susceptibilities fully alive and strong. Mr. Digby could not interrupt her. He threw himself down 011 a dry piece of sand, and waited; watching her, and watching with a sad sort of pleasure the everlasting rise and breaking of those curling billows. Things spiritual and material get very mixed up in such a mood; and anon the ocean became to Mr. Digby somehow identified with the sea of trouble the tides of which do overflow all this world. The breaking waves were but the constantly occurring and recurring bursts of misfortune and disaster which overtake everybody. Here it is, there it is, it is here again, it is always somewhere; ay, far as the eye can reach. Here is this child, now,—
"Mr. Digby, you are tired—you don't like it—you are just waiting for me," Rotha said suddenly, with delicate good feeling, coming to his side.
"I do like it, always. I am not tired, thank you, Rotha."
"But you are not taking pleasure in it now," she said gently.
"No. I was thinking, how full the world is of trouble."
"Why should you think that just now? You had better think, how full it is of pleasure. It's as full—it seems to me as full—as the very sea itself."