CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Papa,” Allyn said bravely; “I’d like to have a talk with you, before the day is over.”

Dr. McAlister looked up in surprise, for the boy’s tone was weighted with meaning.  During the two or three weeks that they had spent at the shore, Dr. McAlister had been congratulating himself upon the change in his young son.  Allyn had seemed brighter, happier, more like the normal boy of his age, and his father had been hoping that some mental crisis was past, that the old moodiness had vanished.  For the last day or two, however, Allyn’s face had been overcast, and the doctor’s anxiety had returned to him once more.  Nevertheless, there was no trace of this in his voice, as he answered,—­

“I wanted to go for a drive on the moors, this afternoon, and I had wondered whether I could get somebody to go with me.  Will you be ready, right after dinner?”

Down on the beach, that morning, there was a general question about Allyn and Cicely; but neither of them put in an appearance.  Cicely, indeed, had been ready to start for the awning; but she saw Allyn going towards the road, and she ran after him to ask whither he was bound.

“Just for a walk, out to Kidd’s Treasure or somewhere.”

“Who with?” she demanded, regardless of grammar.

“Alone.”

She looked into his face inquiringly.

“Anything wrong, Allyn?”

He shook his head.

“Why don’t you come down to the beach?”

“Don’t want to.  Cis, I’m going to have it out with my father, this afternoon.”

She nodded slowly.

“Yes, you may as well.  It’s about time.”

He turned away and started down the narrow road through the town.  She stood looking after him for a moment; then she called,—­

“Mayn’t I go, too, Allyn?”

“If you want to.  I sha’n’t be back in time for the bathing hour, though,” he answered; but his eyes belied the scant cordiality of his words.

For more than an hour, they sat on the high bluff that juts seaward at the south of the town.  On the one hand, the sea stretched away, its deep sapphire blue only broken by the diagonal white line that marked the rips; on the other were the treeless moors looking in the changing lights like a vast expanse of pinkish brown plush.  Directly at their feet, the little bowl of Kidd’s Pond lay among its rushes like a turquoise ringed about with malachite; beyond it was the grey village, and beyond again, the lighthouse whose tall white tower by day and whose flashing light at night are the beacons which seem to welcome the wanderers of the summer colony, whenever their steps are turned back to Quantuck.

At length, Cicely rose to her feet.

“We must go, Allyn.  Here is the noon train now, and we shall be late to dinner.”

But the boy did not stir.  He sat with his elbows on his knees, his chin resting on the back of his clasped fingers, while his eyes followed the slow approach of the primitive little Quantuck train.  Cicely waited for a moment.  Then she came back to his side once more and dropped down on the coarse moorland grass.