Dear Lady Glenburnie’s letter had something of temptation lurking in it somewhere.  The turret room, commanding its views of purple hills and sunsets, and the warmest of welcomes!  But, again, the most aching of memories.  I could not go there again under circumstances so different.  If ever it could be again as it had been, how I should love it!  So that invitation I declined, saying I should be in Cornwall with Diana.  Lady Glenburnie would forgive the mention of Diana, I knew, and of Betty, Hugh, and Sara I said nothing, as she had stipulated.

Then I wrote to Julia saying I would go to her after I had been to Cornwall.  She might need consoling by then, should Archie have proved himself recovered of the wounds inflicted by her.  This I did not tell her.  If I waited a little, there might be nothing to tell.

Chapter XIV

So to Cornwall I went, and found the sands and the coves and the rocks and the sea, just as Diana had said, nor was I disappointed in the back view of Sara with her petticoats tucked into her bathing-drawers.  It was divine.  She was delicious, too, paddling, and there were enough nurses to prevent her doing more, if necessary, and Diana and I could, if we liked, lie on the sands and watch the children.  But it so happens that I love building castles and making puddings, and, curiously enough, Diana does too, and we were children once more with perhaps less hinge in our backs than formerly, but still we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Betty, the first day, full of faith, tried to walk on the sea, and was pulled out very wet and disappointed, and her faith a little shaken, perhaps, for the moment.  Hugh told her she didn’t have faith hard enough.  “You must go like this,” and he held his breath, threatening to become purple in the face.

“Could you now?” said Betty wistfully, when Hugh was at his reddest.

“No!” he said, “because I burst.  Aunt Woggles looked at me when I was just believing very hard.”

Betty forgot that trouble in her infinite delight at discovering where Heaven really was.  She knew if she could just row out to the silver pathway across the sea, it would lead straight to Heaven.  “I know it would,” she said.

Hugh objected because Heaven was in the sky, that he knew!  Betty said how did he know?

“Well, look,” said Hugh; “you can see it’s all bright and blue and shining, and angels fly, and you can’t fly on the sea, so that shows.”

Betty wasn’t sure of that because of flying-fish; she’d seen them in a book where “F” was for flying-fish, so she knew.  But Hugh knew that angels weren’t fish, because fish is good to eat and angels aren’t.  I was glad the culinary knowledge of Hugh and Betty didn’t extend to “angels on horseback,” or where should we have been in the abysses of argument?