Nichola narrowed her eyes and nodded as if she knew more about the sea than she would care to tell.
“Oh, well,” she said with resignation, “I s’pose the good Lord don’t count suicide a first-class crime when you’re old.”
“We shall want breakfast,” I continued with great firmness, “at half after six.”
“The last breakfast that I’ll ever have to get you,” meditated Nichola, turning her back on me. The impudent old woman believes because she is four years younger than I that she is able to look after me. I cannot understand such self-sufficiency. I am wholly able to look after myself.
Pelleas and I dreamed all that night of what the morrow held for us. We determined to take a little luncheon and, going straight to the beach and as near to the water as possible, lie there in the sand the whole day long.
“And build sand houses and caves with passages sidewise,” said Pelleas with determination and as if he were seven.
“And watch the clouds and the gulls,” said I.
“And find a big wave away out and follow it till it comes in,” Pelleas added.
“And let the sand run through our fingers—O, Pelleas,” I cried, “I think it will make us young.”
So the sea spoke to us and we were wild for that first cool salt breath of it, and the glare and the gray and the boom of the surf. But Nichola, to whom the sea is the sea, bade us good-bye next morning with no sign of relenting in her judgment on us.