A Matter of Interest | Page 2

thunder of the surf, a thought occurred to me: how unpleasant it would be if I suddenly stumbled on a summer boarder. As this joyless impossibility flitted across my mind, I rounded a bleak sand dune.
A summer girl stood directly in my path.
If I jumped, I think the young lady has pardoned me by this time. She ought to, because she also started, and said something in a very faint voice. What she said was "Oh!"
She stared at me as though I had just crawled up out of the sea to bite her. I don't know what my own expression resembled, but I have been given to understand it was idiotic.
Now I perceived, after a few moments, that the young lady was frightened, and I knew I ought to say something civil. So I said, "Are there any mosquitoes here?"
"No," she replied, with a slight quiver in her voice; "I have only seen one, and it was biting somebody else."
I looked foolish; the conversation seemed so futile, and the young lady appeared to be more nervous than before. I had an impulse to say, "Do not run; I have breakfasted," for she seemed to be meditating a plunge into the breakers. What I did say was: "I did not know anybody was here. I do not intend to intrude. I come from Captain McPeek's, and I am writing an ode to the ocean." After I had said this it seemed to ring in my ears like, "I come from Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James."
I glanced timidly at her.
"She's thinking of the same thing," said I to myself. "What an ass I must appear!"
However, the young lady seemed to be a trifle reassured. I noticed she drew a sigh of relief and looked at my shoes. She looked so long that it made me suspicious, and I also examined my shoes. They seemed to be fairly respectable.
"I--I am sorry," she said, "but would you mind not walking on the beach?"
This was sudden. I had intended to retire and leave the beach to her, but I did not fancy being driven away so abruptly.
"I was about to withdraw, madam," said I, bowing stiffly; "I beg you will pardon any inconvenience--"
"Dear me!" she cried, "you don't understand. I do not--I would not think for a moment of asking you to leave Pine Inlet. I merely ventured to request you to walk on the dunes. I am so afraid that your footprints may obliterate the impressions that my father is studying."
"Oh!" said I, looking about me as though I had been caught in the middle of a flower-bed; "really I did not notice any impressions. Impressions of what--if I may be permitted?"
"I don't know," she said, smiling a little at my awkward pose. "If you step this way in a straight line you can do no damage."
I did as she bade me. I suppose my movements resembled the gait of a wet peacock. Possibly they recalled the delicate man?��uvres of the kangaroo. Anyway, she laughed.
This seriously annoyed me. I had been at a disadvantage; I walk well enough when let alone.
"You can scarcely expect," said I, "that a man absorbed in his own ideas could notice impressions on the sand. I trust I have obliterated nothing."
As I said this I looked back at the long line of footprints stretching away in prospective across the sand. They were my own. How large they looked! Was that what she was laughing at?
"I wish to explain," she said gravely, looking at the point of her parasol. "I am very sorry to be obliged to warn you--to ask you to forego the pleasure of strolling on a beach that does not belong to me. Perhaps," she continued, in sudden alarm, "perhaps this beach belongs to you?"
"The beach? Oh, no," I said.
"But--but you were going to write poems about it?"
"Only one-and that does not necessitate owning the beach. I have observed," said I frankly, "that the people who own nothing write many poems about it."
She looked at me seriously.
"I write many poems," I added.
She laughed doubtfully.
"Would you rather I went away?" I asked politely.
"I? Why, no--I mean that you may do as you please--except please do not walk on the beach."
"Then I do not alarm you by my presence?" I inquired. My clothes were a bit ancient. I wore them shooting, sometimes. "My family is respectable," I added; and I told her my name.
"Oh! Then you wrote 'Culled Cowslips' and 'Faded Fig-Leaves,' and you imitate Maeterlinck, and you--Oh, I know lots of people that you know;" she cried with every symptom of relief; "and you know my brother."
"I am the author," said I coldly, "of 'Culled Cowslips,' but 'Faded Fig-Leaves' was an earlier work, which I no longer recognise, and I should be grateful to you