A staid-looking, exquisitely neat, elderly woman brought her bonnet, umbrella, gloves, and a large Scotch plaid shawl, in which she wrapped Miss Dudley, with much solicitude, and was so prettily thanked for her pains that I longed to have the wrapping up to do myself.

“I really do not think I needed to be muffled up quite so closely to-day,” said my hostess, as she stepped lightly from the piazza to the sunlit gravel-walk; “but Bonner is ten years older than I, and feels the cold a good deal herself, and I do not like to make her anxious about me.  She had a great fright, poor thing! when I was ill.  Where shall we go, Miss Morne?—­to the garden or the shore?  I am not certain that those clouds mean to give us time for both.”

Not knowing which she would prefer, I answered that I could hardly choose, unless she would be so kind as to tell me which was the most beautiful.  To my joy, she said the shore.  The path ran close to the edge of the cliffs; and below our very feet were the beach and the breakers.  We both forgot ourselves at first, I think, in the sight and sound.

At length she turned, with a sudden movement, and looked me in the face.  “I do believe, Miss Morne,” said she, “that you are one of the fortunate people who have the power to enjoy this to the full.  I trust that we may often still enjoy it here together.”

“Shall I tell you how I enjoy it, ma’am?” I exclaimed, carried out of myself at sight of the enthusiasm that was tinging her delicate cheek and lighting up her eyes.  “As we enjoy those things that it never comes into our heads to ask ourselves whether we like or not.  Some things we have to ask ourselves, whether we like or not, before we know, and even after we are scarcely sure; and some things, such as the poor little ‘Marchioness’s’ orange-peel and water, we have to ’make believe very hard’ in order to like at all.  But home when we have been away, and friends when we have been lonely, and water when we are thirsty, and the sea always!—­we never ask ourselves if those are good,—­we know.”  Then my face burnt.  How it would burn in those girlish days!

And how foolish I felt, or had begun to feel, when Miss Dudley slowly answered, looking mercifully away from me and at the waves:  “Very true, Miss Morne!  You speak from your heart, and to mine.”

The clouds were forbearing, and allowed us time afterwards for a visit to the gorgeous garden.  We walked to the summer-house at the very end, from which a winding path began to climb the hill.  There Miss Dudley paused.  “My chamois days are over, for the present, at least,” said she.  “We must wait for my little nieces or nephew to escort you up there.  Shall we go in?”