“I have a mother—I am to be a preacher!” the words were almost hissed forth—but having uttered them, he seemed immediately to regain tranquillity. “Do you remember the day when we two had a pic-nic here, and gathered moss from the rocks, and made those crosses?” he said, tenderly.
“Why, yes,” she answered, with evident surprise—“to be sure I remember—it was only last week. What a lovely day it was—and what a beautiful cross that was you shaped for me. I look at it every day—I believe it will never fade.”
“It can not fade.... You spoke of my writing books ... what should I write them for?”
“Money and Fame—what all authors write for.”
“Oh, what a mistake! not all! Sit down here, Ella. There’s a good girl. Don’t you know there are some persons who don’t write for money, and who don’t care for fame? Some who write because they must, who’d go crazy outright, if they didn’t, but who would just as soon dig a hole in the ground, and throw what they write in there, or make a burial place of this sea, as they’d have their writings printed? They write to satisfy their own great spirits, not to please others.”
“No, I never heard of such a thing, and I don’t believe it either. You are talking in fun, to hear yourself—or to get me into a dispute with you—nothing pleases you better.”
The boy looked up, his eyes met those of the girl beside him—they smiled on each other. What children they were. How strangely forgetful of the gulf that lay between them!
“See, Ella, I have finished my work.”
It was getting very cold and cheerless there on the sea-side, and she shivered as she turned to look at the completed work, whose progress she had shrunk from watching.
“What did you call it? Oh, I remember, that is the anchor. But there’s another mark below it, an old one too,” she said, bending lower, that she might see it more distinctly. “You never told me about this—what is it?”