“It really is nice to-day,” said Eve.  “When the breeze comes from the direction of the coast it cools things off deliciously.  I suppose it’s only imagination, but sometimes I think I can smell the salt—­or taste it.  That’s scarcely possible, though, for we’re a good twenty miles inland.”

“I’m not so sure,” he answered.  “Lots of times I’ve thought I could smell the ocean here.  Does it take very long to get to Portsmouth or the beach?  Couldn’t we go some day, you and Miss Mullett and the Doctor and I?”

“That would be jolly,” said Eve.  “We must talk it over with them.  I’m afraid, though, the Doctor couldn’t go.  There’s always some one sick hereabouts.”

“Oh, he could leave enough of his nasty medicine one day to last through the next.  He’s one of the nicest old chaps I ever met, Miss Walton.  He’s awfully fond of you, isn’t he?”

“I think he is,” she answered, “and I’m awfully fond of him, I don’t know whether I ought to tell this, but I have a suspicion that he used to be very fond of my mother before she was married.  He’s told me so many little things about her, and he always speaks of her in such a quiet, dear sort of way.  I wonder—­I wonder if he ever asked her to marry him.”

“Somehow I don’t believe he ever did,” said Wade, thoughtfully.  “I could imagine him being sort of shy if he were in love.  Perhaps, while he was working his courage up to the sticking point, your father stepped in and carried off the prize.  That happens sometimes, you know.”

“I suppose it does,” laughed Eve.  “Or perhaps he was so busy quoting bits of poetry to her that he never had time!”

“That’s so.”  Wade smiled.  “There’s one thing certain, and that is, if she did refuse him, he had a quotation quite ready for the occasion.”

“‘’Tis better to have loved and lost’ and so on?”

“Something of the sort,” answered Wade.  “I wonder, though, if that is true, Miss Walton?”

“What?” asked Eve.

“That it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

“I’m sure I don’t know.  Probably not.  Perhaps, like a great many of the Doctor’s quotations, it’s more poetical than truthful.”

“I think it must be,” mused Wade.  “It doesn’t sound logical to me.  To say that, when you’ve seen a thing you want and can’t have it, you’re better off than before you wanted it, doesn’t sound like sense.”

“Have you ever wanted much you didn’t get?” asked Eve.

Wade thought a minute.

“Come to think of it, Miss Walton, I don’t believe I have.  I can’t think of anything just now.  Perhaps that’s why I’d hate all the more to be deprived of what I want now,” he said, seriously.  She shot a glance at him from under the edge of the sunshade.

“You talk as though some one was trying to cheat you out of something you’d set your heart on,” she said lightly.

“That isn’t far wrong,” he answered.  “I have set my heart on something and it doesn’t look now as though I’d ever get it.”