“Well packed with flannel?” she wanted to know. And we went out in the street feeling like disobedient children, undeserving of the small, suggestive parcel of lunch which at the last moment she thrust in our hands.
“After all,” Pelleas said, “what is it to Nichola if we get drowned or run over?”
“Nothing,” we agreed with ungrateful determination.
Yet when we reached our station we had become so absorbed in Little Invalid that the sea had almost to pluck us by the sleeve before we remembered.
It was early for guests at the hotel and but few were on the veranda. Little Invalid was lifted from her carriage and placed in a rocking-chair while the old-young married people went in the office. And when Pelleas suggested that I rest before we go down to the beach I gladly assented and sat with him beside the little creature, who welcomed me with a shy smile. She was so like a bird that I had almost expected her to vanish at my approach; and when she did not do so the temptation to talk with her was like the desire to feed a bird with crumbs from my hand.
“It is pleasant to be near the sea again,” I said to her, by way of crumbs.
Her eyes had been fixed on the far blue and they widened as she turned to me.
“‘Again’?” she repeated. “I haven’t ever seen it before, ma’am.”
“You have not?” I said. “What a sorrow to live far from the sea.”
She shook her head.