“You mustn’t drink that—­it’s salty!”

The sentimentalist sorrowfully put the bitter draught away, and the child rattled on: 

“If you’re down here to-morrow, I’ll show you where we find scallop-shells; maybe you can find some with pink and yellow spots on them. I’ve got some.  If you don’t find any, I’ll give you one.”

“Thank you,” said her companion.

Just then some one shouted “Alice!” and the child exclaiming, “Mamma’s calling me; good-by,” hurried away, while the broker walked slowly toward the hotel with an expression of countenance which would have hidden him from his oldest acquaintance.

Mr. Putchett spent the evening on the piazza instead of in the barroom, and he neither smoked nor drank.  Before retiring he contracted with the colored cook to shave him in the morning, and to black his boots; and he visited the single store of the neighborhood and purchased a shirt, some collars, and a cravat.

When in the morning he was duly shaved, dressed and brushed, he critically surveyed himself in the glass, and seemed quite dissatisfied.  He moved from the glass, spread a newspaper on the table, and put into it the contents of his capacious pockets.  A second examination before the glass seemed more satisfactory in result, thus indicating that to the eye of Mr. Putchett his well-stuffed pockets had been unsightly in effect.

The paper and its contents he gave the landlord to deposit in the hotel safe; then he ate a hurried, scanty breakfast, and again sought the bench on the beach.

No one was in sight, for it was scarcely breakfast-time at the boarding-houses; so he looked for little Alice’s well, and mourned to find that the tide had not even left any sign of its location.

Then he seated himself on the bench again, contemplating his boots, looked up the road, stared out to sea, and then looked up the road again, tried to decipher some of the names carved on the bench, walked backward and forward, looking up the road at each turn he made, and in every way indicated the unpleasant effect of hope deferred.

Finally, however, after two hours of fruitless search, Mr. Putchett’s eyes were rewarded by the sight of little Alice approaching the beach with a bathing-party.  He at first hurried forward to meet her, but he was restrained by a sentiment found alike in curbstone-brokers and in charming young ladies—­a feeling that it is not well to give one’s self away without first being sufficiently solicited to do so.

He noticed, with a mingled pleasure and uneasiness, that little Alice did not at first recognize him, so greatly had his toilet altered his general appearance.

Even after he made himself known, he was compelled to submit to further delay, for the party had come to the beach to bathe, and little Alice must bathe, too.

She emerged from a bathing-house in a garb very odd to the eyes of Mr. Putchett, but one which did not at all change that gentleman’s opinion of the wearer.  She ran into the water, was thrown down by the surf, she was swallowed by some big waves and dived through others, and all the while the veteran operator watched her with a solicitude, which, despite his anxiety for her safety, gave him a sensation as delightful as it was strange.