‘What a good, brave King!’ said Anne.
Loveday seemed anxious to come to more personal matters. ‘Will you let me take you round to the other side, where you can see better?’ he asked. ‘The Queen and the princesses are at the window.’
Anne passively assented. ‘David, wait here for me,’ she said; ‘I shall be back again in a few minutes.’
The trumpet-major then led her off triumphantly, and they skirted the crowd and came round on the side towards the sands. He told her everything he could think of, military and civil, to which Anne returned pretty syllables and parenthetic words about the colour of the sea and the curl of the foam—a way of speaking that moved the soldier’s heart even more than long and direct speeches would have done.
‘And that other thing I asked you?’ he ventured to say at last.
‘We won’t speak of it.’
‘You don’t dislike me?’
‘O no!’ she said, gazing at the bathing-machines, digging children, and other common objects of the seashore, as if her interest lay there rather than with him.
‘But I am not worthy of the daughter of a genteel professional man—that’s what you mean?’
‘There’s something more than worthiness required in such cases, you know,’ she said, still without calling her mind away from surrounding scenes. ‘Ah, there are the Queen and princesses at the window!’