“You waited for me!  You’ve been waiting for me!” as if it were the most astonishing fact in history.  “And since when have you been waiting for me, you—­”

Lindsay laughed, not only with her eyes, but with her soft voice.  “Ever since the morning after, your Excellency.  Alice told me all about it before I left, and made me see reason.  And I—­and I was right sorry I’d been so cross.  I thought you’d come some time—­but you came right slow,” she said, and her eyes travelled over his face as if she were making sure he was really there.

“And I never dared to think you would see me!” he said.  “But now!”

And again there were circumstances that are best described by a hiatus.

The day after, when Mary Mooney, discreetly letting her soul’s idol get into his library before greeting him, trotted into that stately chamber with soft, heavy footsteps, she was met with a kiss and a bear’s hug that, as she told Mrs. Rudd later, “was like the year he was nine.”

“I didn’t bring her, Mary,” the Governor said, “but you’d better let me stay, for she’s coming.”

THE LITTLE REVENGE

Suddenly a gust of fresh wind caught Sally’s hat, and off it flew, a wide-winged pink bird, over the old, old sea-wall of Clovelly, down among the rocks of the rough beach, tumbling and jumping from one gray stone to another, and getting so far away that, in the soft violet twilight, it seemed as lost as any ship of the Spanish Armada wrecked long ago on this wild Devonshire coast.

“Oh!” cried Sally distractedly, and clapped her hands to her head with the human instinct to shut the stable door after the horse is gone.  “Oh!” she cried again; “my pretty hat!  And oh! it’s in the water!”

But suddenly, out of somewhere in the twilight, there was a man chasing it.  Sally leaned over the rugged, yellowish, grayish stone wall and excitedly called to him.

“Oh, thank you!” she cried, and “That’s so good of you!”

The hat had tacked and was sailing inshore now, one stiff pink taffeta sail set to the breeze.  And in a minute, with a reckless splash into the dashing waves, the man had it, and an easy, athletic figure swung up the causeway, holding it away from him, as if it might nip at him.  He wore a dark blue jersey, and loose, flapping trousers of a seaman.

“He’s only a sailor,” Sally said under her breath; “I’d better tip him.”  Her hand slipped into her pocket and I heard the click of her purse.

He looked from one to the other of us in the dim light inquiringly, as he came up, and then off went his cap, and his face broke into the gentlest, most charming smile as he delivered the hat into Sally’s outstretched hands.

“I’m afraid it’s a bit damp,” he said.