up to her knees among your dirty shirts when you went out, did you not give her one parting kiss, which would have transfigured her virtuous drudgery for her into a sacred pleasure?  One is heartily glad to see you disturbed, cross though you may look at it, by that sturdy step and jolly whistle which burst in on you from the other end of the chasm, as Tom Thurnall, with an old smock frock over his coat and a large basket on his arm, comes stumbling and hopping towards you, dropping every now and then on hands and knees, and turning over on his back, to squeeze his head into some muddy crack, and then withdraw it with the salt water dripping down his nose.

Elsley closed his eyes, and rested his head on his hand in a somewhat studied “pose.”  But as he wished not to be interrupted, it may not have been altogether unpardonable to pretend sleep.  However, the sleeping posture had exactly the opposite effect to that which he designed.

“Ah, Mr. Vavasour!”

“Humph!” quoth he slowly, if not sulkily.

“I admire your taste, sir; a charming summerhouse old Triton has vacated for your use; but let me advise you not to go to sleep in it.”

“Why then, sir?”

“Because—­It’s no business of mine, of course:  but the tide has turned already; and if a breeze springs up old Triton will be back again in a hurry, and in a rage also; and—­I may possibly lose a good patient.”

Elsley, who knew nothing about the tides, save that “the moon wooed the ocean,” or some such important fact, thanked him coolly enough, and returned to a meditative attitude.  Tom saw that he was in the seventh heaven, and went on:  but he had not gone three steps before he pulled up short, slapping his hands together once, as a man does who has found what he wants; and then plunged up to his knees in a rock pool, and then began working very gently at something under water.

Elsley watched him for full five minutes with so much curiosity, that, despite of himself, he asked him what he was doing.

Tom had his whole face under water, and did not hear, till Elsley had repeated the question.

“Only a rare zoophyte,” said he at last, lifting his dripping visage, and gasping for breath; and then he dived again.

“Inexplicable pedantry of science!” thought Elsley to himself, while Tom worked on steadfastly, and at last rose, and, taking out a phial from his basket, was about to deposit in it something invisible.

“Stay a moment; you really have roused my curiosity by your earnestness.  May I see what it is for which you have taken so much trouble?”

Tom held out on his finger a piece of slimy crust the size of a halfpenny.  Elsley could only shrug his shoulders.

“Nothing to you, sir, I doubt not; but worth a guinea to me, even if it be only to mount bits of it as microscopic objects.”

“So you mingle business with science?” said Elsley, rather in a contemptuous tone.