Miss Violet was not daunted.
"Perhaps it is a goose," she said coolly. "I never saw but one flying—- you remember you shot it. What farm-yard has this one left?"
"Oh, for shame, Violet," Mrs. Warrener called out, "to rake up old stories!"
She was punished for it. The insulted sportsman was casting about for the cruelest retort he could think of, when, as it happened, Miss Violet bethought her of looking round the corner of the boiler to see whether they were getting near Ryde; and at the same moment it also happened that a heavy wave, striking the bows of the steamer, sent a heap of water whirling down between the paddle-box and the funnel, which caught the young lady on the face with a crack like a whip. As to the shout of laughter which then greeted her, that small party of folks had heard nothing like it for many a day. There was salt water dripping from her hair; salt water in her eyes; salt water running down her tingling and laughing cheeks; and she richly deserved to be asked, as she was immediately asked, whether the Solent was compounded of water and marl or water and chalk, and which brand she preferred.
Was it the balmy southern air that tempered the vehemence of these wanderers as they made their way across the island, and getting into a carriage at Ventnor, proceeded to drive along the Undercliff? There was a great quiet prevailing along these southern shores. They drove by underneath the tall and crumbling precipices, with wood pigeons suddenly shooting out from the clefts, and jackdaws wheeling about far up in the blue. They passed by sheltered woods, bestarred with anemones and primroses, and showing here and there the purple of the as yet half-opened hyacinth; they passed by lush meadows, all ablaze with the golden yellow of the celandine and the purple of the ground ivy; they passed by the broken, picturesque banks where the tender blue of the speedwell was visible from time to time, with the white glimmer of the starwort. And then all this time they had on their left a gleaming and wind-driven sea, full of motion, and light, and color, and showing the hurrying shadows of the flying clouds.
At last far away, secluded and quiet, they came to a quaint little inn, placed high over the sea, and surrounded by sheltering woods and hedges. The sun lay warm on the smooth green lawn in front, where the daisies grew. There were dark shadows—almost black shadows—along the encircling hedge and under the cedars; but these only showed the more brilliantly the silver lighting of the restless, whirling, wind-swept sea beyond. It was a picturesque little house, with its long veranda half-smothered in ivy and rose bushes now in bud; with its tangled garden about, green with young hawthorn and sweetened by the perfume of the lilacs; with its patches of uncut grass, where the yellow cowslips drooped. There was an air of dreamy repose about the place; even that whirling and silvery gray sea produced no sound; here the winds were stilled, and the black shadows of the trees on that smooth green lawn only moved with the imperceptible moving of the sun.
Violet went up stairs and into her room alone; she threw open the small casements, and stood there looking out with a somewhat vague and distant look. There was no mischief now in those dark and tender eyes; there was rather an anxious and wistful questioning. And her heart seemed to go out from her to implore these gentle winds, and the soft colors of the sea, and the dreamy stillness of the woods, that now they should, if ever that was possible to them, bring all their sweet and curative influences to bear on him who had come among them. Now, if ever! Surely the favorable skies would heed, and the secret healing of the woods would hear, and the bountiful life-giving sea winds would bestir to her prayer! Surely it was not too late!