Claude Molyneux, in all the glory of fourteen summers and a suit of new white flannels, stands looking up with a slight frown of impatience at an open bay-window. It has been one of the hottest of August days; and now at four o'clock in the afternoon the haze of heat hangs over the sea, and makes a purple cloud of the distant coast. But, for all that, it is splendid weather; just the kind of weather that a boy likes when he comes to spend his holidays at the seaside; and Claude, who is an Indian-born boy, has no objection to a good hot summer.
As he stands, hands in pockets, on the narrow pebbled path under the window, you cannot help admiring the grace of his slim, well-knit figure, and the delicate moulding of his features. The fair skin is sun-tanned, as a boy's skin ought to be; the eyes, large and heavy-lidded, are of a dark grey, not brilliant, but soft; the light, fine hair is cropped close to the shapely head. He is a lad that one likes at the first glance; and although one sees, all too plainly, that those chiselled lips can take a disdainful curl sometimes, one knows instinctively that they may always be trusted to tell the simple truth. Anything mean, anything sneaky, could not live in the steady light of those dark-grey eyes.
"I say, Bee-e!" he sings out again, with a little drawl, which, however, does not make the tone less imperative. Master Claude is not accustomed to be kept waiting, and is beginning to think himself rather badly used.
"Coming," cries a sweet treble; and then a head and shoulders appear above the row of scarlet geraniums on the window-sill.
She is worth waiting for, this loitering Bee, whose thirteen years have given her none of the airs of premature womanhood. Her smooth round cheeks are tinted with the tender pink of the shell; her great eyes, of speedwell blue, are opened frankly and fearlessly on the whole world. Taken singly, not one of her features is, perhaps, quite faultless; but it would be hard to find a critic who could quarrel with the small face, framed in waves of ruddy golden hair that go tumbling down below her waist. You can see a freckle or two on the sides of her little nose, and notice that her slender hands are browned by the sea-side sun; for Bee is one of those lucky girls who are permitted to dabble freely in salt-water, and get all the benefit that briny breezes can bestow.
"I couldn't come sooner," she says in a tone of apology. "We always have to learn a hymn on Saturdays, and I've had such a bother with Dolly. She would want to know where 'the scoffer's seat' was, and if it had a cushion? And it does so worry me to try to explain."
"Oh, you poor thing—you must be quite worn out!" responds Claude, with genuine sympathy. "But make haste; you haven't got your hat on yet."
Bee makes a little dive, and brings up a wide-brimmed sailor's hat with a blue ribbon round it. She puts it on, fastens it securely under the silken masses of her hair, and then declares herself to be quite ready.
In the next instant the girl and boy are walking side by side along the shore, near enough to the sea to hear the soft rush of the tide. The blue eyes are turned inquiringly on Claude's face, which is just a shade graver than it ought to be on this delightful do-nothing day.
"Bee," he says after a silence, "I don't quite approve of your being great friends with Crooke—Tim Crooke. What a name it is! He may be a good sort of fellow, but he's not in our set at all, you know."