“I know what you’d enjoy a good deal better than merely getting out of sight of your own door for a week or two,” said he.  “Wouldn’t you like to get clear away from England for six months, and go wandering about in all sorts of fine places?  Why, I could take such a trip in that time!  I should like to see what you’d say to some of the old Dutch towns and their churches, and all that; then Cologne, you know, and a sail up the Rhine to Mainz; then you’d go on to Bale and Geneva, and we’d get you a fine big carriage, with the horses decorated with foxes’ and pheasants’ tails, to drive you to Chamounix.  Then, when you had gone tremulously over the Mer de Glace, and kept your wits about you going down the Mauvais Pas, I don’t think you could do better than go on to the Italian lakes—­you never saw anything like them, I’ll be bound—­and Naples and Florence.  Would you come back by the Tyrol, and have a turn at Zurich and Lucerne, with a long ramble through the Black Forest in a trap resembling a ramshackle landau?”

“Thank you,” said Wenna very cheerfully.  “The sketch is delightful, but I am pretty comfortable where I am.”

“But this can’t last,” said he.

“And neither can my holidays,” she answered.

“Oh, but they ought to,” he retorted vehemently.  “You have not half enough amusement in your life:  that’s my opinion.  You slave too much for all those folks about Eglosilyan and their dozens of children.  Why, you don’t get anything out of life as you ought to.  What have you to look forward to?  Only the same ceaseless round of working for other people.  Don’t you think you might let some one else have a turn at that useful but monotonous occupation?”

“But Wenna has something else to look forward to now,” her mother reminded him gently; and after that he did not speak for some while.

Fair and blue was the sea that shone all around the land when they got out on the rough moorland near the coast.  They drove to the solitary little inn perched over the steep cliffs, and here the horses were put up and luncheon ordered.  Would Mrs. Rosewarne venture down to the great rocks at the promontory?  No, she would rather stay indoors till the young people returned; and so these two went along the grassy path themselves.

They clambered down the slopes, and went out among the huge blocks of weather-worn granite, many of which were brilliant with gray, green and orange lichens.  There was a low and thunderous noise in the air:  far below them, calm and fine as the day was, the summer sea dashed and roared into gigantic caverns, while the white foam floated out again on the troubled waves.  Could anything have been more magical than the colors of the sea—­its luminous greens, its rich purples, its brilliant blues, lying in long swaths on the apparently motionless surface?  It was only the seething white beneath their feet and the hoarse thunder along the coast that told of the force of this summer-like sea; and for the rest the picture was light and calm and beautiful; but there the black rocks basked in the sunlight, the big skarts standing here and there on their ledges, not moving a feather.  A small steamer was slowly making for the island farther out, where a lighthouse stood.  And far away beyond these, on the remote horizon, the Scilly Isles lay like a low bank of yellow fog under the pale-blue skies.