"Materials!" echoed Julia. "Yours is made up upon a nice complexion.
That bewilders all men"s faculties. Do _you_ think she is very pretty, George?"
Mr. Lenox had no time to answer, for Lois, and of course Tom, at this moment left the cove bottom and came towards them. Lois was beaming, like a child, with such bright, pure pleasure; and coming up, showed upon her open palm a very delicate little white sh.e.l.l, not a snail sh.e.l.l by any means. "I have found that!" she proclaimed.
"What is that?" said Julia disdainfully, though not with rudeness.
"You see. Isn"t it beautiful? And isn"t it wonderful that it should not be broken? If you think of the power of the waves here, that have beat to pieces almost everything--rolled and ground and crushed everything that would break--and this delicate little thing has lived through it."
"There is a power of life in some delicate things," said Tom.
"Power of fiddlestick!" said his sister. "Miss Lothrop, I think this place is a terrible desert!"
"Then we will not stay here any longer," said Lois. "I am very fond of these little coves."
"No, no, I mean Appledore generally. It is the stupidest place I ever was in in my life. There is nothing here."
Lois looked at the lady with an expression of wondering compa.s.sion.
"Your experience does not agree with that of Miss Caruthers?" said Lenox.
"No," said Lois. "Let us take her to the place where you found me this morning; maybe she would like that."
"We must go, I suppose," groaned Julia, as Mr. Lenox helped her up over the rocks after the lighter-footed couple that preceded them. "George, I believe you are in the way."
"Thanks!" said the young man, laughing. "But you will excuse me for continuing to be in the way."
"I don"t know--you see, it just sets Tom free to attend to her. Look at him--picking those purple irises--as if iris did not grow anywhere else! And now elderberry blossoms! And he will give her lessons in botany, I shouldn"t wonder. O, Tom"s a goose!"
"That disease is helpless," said Lenox, laughing again.
"But George, it is madness!"
Mr. Lenox"s laugh rang out heartily at this. His sovereign mistress was not altogether pleased.
"I do certainly consider--and so do you,--I do certainly consider unequal marriages to be a great misfortune to all concerned."
"Certainly--inequalities that cannot be made up. For instance, too tall and too short do not match well together. Or for the lady to be rich and the man to be poor; that is perilous."
"Nonsense, George! don"t be ridiculous! Height is nothing, and money is nothing; but family--and breeding--and habits--"
"What is her family?" asked Mr. Lenox, pursing up his lips as if for a whistle.
"No family at all. Just country people, living at Shampuashuh."
"Don"t you know, the English middle cla.s.s is the finest in the world?"
"No! no better than ours."
"My dear, we have no middle cla.s.s."
"But what about the English middle cla.s.s? why do you bring it up?"
"It owes its great qualities to its having the mixed blood of the higher and the lower."
"Ridiculous! What is that to us, if we have no middle cla.s.s? But don"t you _see_, George, what an unhappy thing it would be for Tom to marry this girl?"
Mr. Lenox whistled slightly, smiled, and pulled a purple iris blossom from a tuft growing in a little spot of wet ground. He offered it to his disturbed companion.
"There is a country flower for you," he observed.
But Miss Caruthers flung the flower impatiently away, and hastened her steps to catch up with her brother and Lois, who made better speed than she. Mr. Lenox picked up the iris and followed, smiling again to himself.
They found Lois seated in her old place, where the gentlemen had seen her in the morning. She rose at once to give the seat to Miss Caruthers, and herself took a less convenient one. It was almost a new scene to Lois, that lay before them now. The lights were from a different quarter; the colours those of the sinking day; the sea, from some inexplicable reason, was rolling higher than it had done six hours ago, and dashed on the rocks and on the reef in beautiful breakers, sending up now and then a tall jet of foam or a shower of spray. The hazy mainland sh.o.r.e line was very indistinct under the bright sky and lowering sun; while every bit of west-looking rock, and every sail, and every combing billow was touched with warm hues or gilded with a sharp reflection. The air was like the air nowhere but at the Isles of Shoals; with the sea"s salt strength and freshness, and at times a waft of perfumes from the land side. Lois drank it with an inexpressible sense of exhilaration; while her eye went joyously roving from the lovely light on a sail, to the dancing foam of the breakers, to the colours of driftwood or seaweed or moss left wet and bare on the rocks, to the line of the distant ocean, or the soft vapoury racks of clouds floating over from the west. She well-nigh forgot her companions altogether; who, however, were less absorbed. Yet for a while they all sat silent, looking partly at Lois, partly at each other, partly no doubt at the leaping spray from the broken waves on the reef. There was only the delicious sound of the splash and gurgle of waters--the scream of a gull--the breath of the air--the chirrup of a few insects; all was wild stillness and freshness and pureness, except only that little group of four human beings. And then, the puzzled vexation and perplexity in Tom"s face, and the impatient disgust in the face of his sister, were too much for Mr. Lenox"s sense of the humorous; and the silence was broken by a hearty burst of laughter, which naturally brought all eyes to himself.
"Pardon!" said the young gentleman. "The delight in your face, Julia, was irresistible."
"Delight!" she echoed. "Miss Lothrop, do you find something here in which you take pleasure?"
Lois looked round. "Yes," she said simply. "I find something everywhere to take pleasure in."
"Even at Shampuashuh?"
"At Shampuashuh, of course. That is my home."
"But I never take pleasure in anything at home. It is all such an old story. Every day is just like any other day, and I know beforehand exactly how everything will be; and one dress is like another, and one party is like another. I must go away from home to get any real pleasure."
Lois wondered if she succeeded.
"That"s a nice look-out for you, George," Caruthers remarked.
"I shall know how to make home so agreeable that she will not want to wander any more," said the other.
"That is what the women do for the men, down our way," said Lois, smiling. She began to feel a little mischief stirring.
"What sort of pleasures do you find, or make, at home, Miss Lothrop?"
Julia went on. "You are very quiet, are you not?"
"There is always one"s work," said Lois lightly. She knew it would be in vain to tell her questioner the instances that came up in her memory; the first dish of ripe strawberries brought in to surprise her grandmother; the new potatoes uncommonly early; the fine yield of her raspberry bushes; the wonderful beauty of the early mornings in her garden; the rarer, sweeter beauty of the Bible reading and talk with old Mrs. Armadale; the triumphant afternoons on the sh.o.r.e, from which she and her sisters came back with great baskets of long clams; and countless other visions of home comfort and home peace, things accomplished and the fruit of them enjoyed. Miss Caruthers could not understand all this; so Lois answered simply,
"There is always one"s work."
"Work! I hate work," cried the other woman. "What do you call work?"
"Everything that is to be done," said Lois. "Everything, except what we do for mere pleasure. We keep no servant; my sisters and I do all that there is to do, in doors and out."
"_Out_--of--doors!" cried Miss Caruthers. "What do you mean? You cannot do the farming?"
"No," said Lois, smiling merrily; "no; not the farming. That is done by men. But the gardening I do."