‘Untold gold, as you will find if you take it.’

‘I can’t buy it at the price,’ she answered demurely.

’Well, I’ll give it for nothing, in gratitude for the peace I shall enjoy this evening.  Mamma, mayn’t I come down Wednesday nights as well as Fridays?’

‘No, my dear, you mayn’t,’ replied Mrs. Fordyce, shaking her head.  ’If you work hard all week, you will enjoy your Saturdays all the more.’

‘All right.  Papa and I will have high jinks; see if we don’t,’ said the lad, with a series of little nods towards the newspaper which hid his father’s face.

Mr. Fordyce did not hear this remark, though he looked up in mild surprise at the laughter it provoked.

‘You seem very merry, Len, my boy.  It is time you were off.’

’Yes, I know.  That’s the way a fellow’s treated in this house—­not allowed five minutes to eat a decent breakfast.  Well, I’m off.  Good-bye, all.’

‘The advice, Leonard?’ asked Gladys, when he came round to her chair.

He bent down, whispered something in her ear, and ran off.

‘What did he say, Gladys.  Do tell us?’ cried Mina, in curiosity.

‘I must, because I don’t understand it,’ answered Gladys.  ’He said, “Don’t let them take you for a walk on the Ballast Bank.”  What did he mean?’

’Oh, the Ballast Bank is the only promenade Troon can boast of, and Len has a rooted aversion to it,’ replied Mina.  ‘He is a most absurd boy.’

In spite, however, of Leonard’s advice, many a delightful blow did Gladys enjoy on the Ballast Bank.

The spring winds had not yet lost their wintry touch on the Ayrshire coast.  Sweeping in from the sea, they made sport with the golfers on the Links, and taxed their skill to the utmost.  The long stretch of grey sand upon which the great green waves rolled in and broke with no gentle murmur, the wide expanse of the still wintry-looking sea, the enchanting pictures to be seen in the clear morning light, where the Arran hills stood out so bold and rugged against the sky, and at sunset, when the tossing waters were sometimes stilled into an exquisite rest, all these were revelations to the girl who had the soul and the eye of an artist, and she drank them in with no ordinary draught of enjoyment.  She lived out of doors.  Wind and weather could not keep her in the house.  When the rain-drops blew fierce and wild in the gale, she would start across the garden, out by the little gate to the beach, and, close by the edge of the angry sea, watch the great waves rolling in to her feet, and as she looked, her eyes grew large and luminous, and she would draw great breaths of delight; the wideness of the sea satisfied her, its wildest moods only breathed into her soul an ineffable calm.