Out of a cab from a livery stable Mrs Bowater and I alighted at our London terminus next morning, to find positively awaiting us beside the wooden platform a first-class railway carriage—a palatial apartment. Swept and garnished, padded and varnished—a miracle of wealth! At this very moment I seem to be looking up in awe at the orange-rimmed (I think it was orange) label stuck on the glass whose inscription I afterwards spelled out backwards from within: "Mrs Bywater and Party." As soon as we and our luggage were safely settled, an extremely polite and fatherly guard locked the door on us. At this Mrs Bowater was a little troubled by the thought of how we should fare in the event of an accident. But he reassured her.

"Never fear, ma'am: accidents are strictly forbidden on this line. Besides which," he added, with a solemn, turtle-like stare, "if I turn the key on the young lady, none of them young a-ogling Don Jooans can force their way in. Strict orders, ma'am."

To make assurance doubly sure, Mrs Bowater pulled down the blinds at every stopping-place. We admired the scenery. We read the warning against pickpockets, and I translated it out of the French. After examining the enormous hotels depicted in the advertisements, we agreed there was nothing like home comforts. Mrs Bowater continued to lose and find in turn our tickets, her purse, her spectacle-case, her cambric pocket-handkerchief, not to mention a mysterious little screw of paper, containing lozenges I think. She scrutinized our luxury with grim determination. And we giggled like two school-girls as we peeped together through the crevices of the blinded windows at the rich, furry passengers who ever and again hurried along, casting angry glances at our shrouded windows.

It being so early in the year—but how mild and sweet a day—there were few occupants of the coach at Axminster. As I had once made a (frequently broken) vow to do at once what scared me, I asked to be perched up on the box beside the lean, brick-faced driver. Thus giddily exalted above his three cantering roan horses, we bowled merrily along. With his whip he pointed out to me every "object of interest" as it went floating by—church and inn, farm and mansion.

"Them's peewits," he would bawl. "And that's the selfsame cottage where lived the little old 'ooman what lived in a shoe." He stooped over me, reins in fist, with his seamed red face and fiery little eye, as if I were a small child home for the holidays. Evening sunlight on the hill-tops and shadowy in the valleys. And presently the three stepping horses—vapour jetting from their nostrils, their sides panting like bellows—dragged the coach up a hill steeper than ever. "And that there," said the driver, as we surmounted the crest—and as if for emphasis he gave a prodigious tug at an iron bar beside him, "that there's the Sea."

The Sea. Flat, bow-shaped, hazed, remote, and of a blue stilling my eyes as with a dream—I verily believe the saltest tears I ever shed in my life smarted on my lids as the spirit in me fled away, to be alone with that far loveliness. A desire almost beyond endurance devoured me. "Yes," cried hidden self to self, "I can never, never love him; but he shall take me away—away—away. Oh, how I have wasted my days, sick for home."

But small opportunity was given me for these sentimental reflections. Nearly at the foot of even another hill, and one so precipitous that during its rattling descent I had to cling like a spider to the driver's strap, we came to a standstill; and in face of a gaping knot of strangers I was lifted down—with a "There! Miss Nantuckety," from the driver—from my perch to the pavement.

The lodgings Mrs Monnerie had taken for us proved to be the sea rooms in a small, white, bow-windowed house on the front, commanding the fishing-boats, the harbour, and the stone Cobb. I tasted my lips, snuffed softly with my nose, stole a look over the Bay, and glanced at Mrs Bowater. Was she, too, half-demented with this peculiar and ravishing experience? I began to shiver; but not with cold, with delight. Face creased up in a smile (the wind had stiffened the skin), cheeks tingling, and ravenously hungry, I watched the ceremonious civilities that were passing between landlady and landlady: Mrs Bowater angular and spare; Mrs Petrie round, dumpy, smooth, and a little bald. My friend Mrs Monnerie was evidently a lady whose lightest word was Sesame. Every delicacy and luxury that Lyme out of its natural resources can have squandered on King George III. was ours without the asking.

Mrs Bowater, it is true, at our sea-fish breakfast next morning, referred in the first place to the smell of drains; next to fleas; and last to greasy cooking. But who should have the privilege of calling the Kettle black unless the Pot? Moreover, we were "first-class" visitors, and had to complain of something. I say "we"; but since, in the first place, all the human houses that I have ever entered have been less sweet to the nose than mere country out-of-doors; since next (as I discovered when I was a child) there must be some ichor or acid in my body unpleasing to man's parasites; and since, last, I cannot bear cooked animals; these little inconveniences, even if they had not existed solely in Mrs Bowater's fancy, would not have troubled me.

The days melted away. We would sally out early, while yet many of Lyme's kitchen chimneys were smokeless, and would return with the shadows of evening. How Mrs Bowater managed to sustain so large a frame for so many hours together on a few hard biscuits and a bottle of cold tea, I cannot discover. Her mood, like our weather that April, was almost always "set fair," and her temper never above a comfortable sixty degrees. We hired a goat-chaise, and with my flaxen hair down my back under a sunbonnet, I drove Reuben up and down the Esplanade—both of us passable ten-year-olds to a careless observer. My cheeks and hands were scorched by the sun; Mrs Bowater added more and more lilac and white to her outdoor attire; and Mrs Petrie lent her a striped, and once handsome parasol with a stork's head for handle, which had been left behind by a visitor—otherwise unendeared.

On warm mornings we would choose some secluded spot on the beach, or on the fragrant, green-turfed cliffs, or in the Uplyme meadows. Though I could never persuade Mrs Bowater to join me, I sometimes dabbled in the sun in some ice-cold, shallow, seaweedy pool between the rocks. Then, while she read the newspaper, or crocheted, I also, over book or needle, indulged in endless reverie. For hours together, with eyes fixed on the glass-green, tumbling water, I would listen to its enormous, far, phantom bells and voices, happier than words can tell. And I would lie at full length, basking in the heat, for it was a hot May, almost wishing that the huge furnace of the sun would melt me away into a little bit of glass: and what colour would that have been, I wonder? If a small heart can fall in love with the whole world, that heart was mine. But the very intensity of this greed and delight—and the tiniest shell or pebble on the beach seemed to be all but exploding with it—was a severe test of my strength.

One late twilight, I remember, as we idled homeward, the planet Venus floating like a luminous water-drop in the primrose of the western sky, we passed by a low white-walled house beneath trees. And from an open window came into the quiet the music of a fiddle. What secret decoy was in that air I cannot say. I stopped dead, looking about me as if for refuge, and drinking in the while the gliding, lamenting sounds.

Curiously perturbed, I caught at Mrs Bowater's skirt. Sky and darkening headland seemed to be spinning around me—melting out into a dream. "Oh, Mrs Bowater," I whispered, as if I were drowning, "it is strange for us to be here."

She dropped herself on the grass beside me, brushing with her dress the scent of wild thyme into the dewy air, and caught my hands in hers. Her long face close to mine, she gently shook me; "Now, now; now, now!" she called. "Come back, my pretty one. See! It's me, me, Mrs Bowater.... The love she's been to me!"

I smiled, groped with my hand, opened my eyes in the dimness to answer her. But a black cloud came over them; and the next thing I recall is waking to find myself being carried along in her arms, cold and half lifeless; and she actually breaking ever and again into a shambling run, as she searched my face in what seemed, even to my scarcely conscious brain, an extravagant anxiety.

Four days afterwards—and I completely restored—we found on the breakfast table of our quiet sea-room an unusually bountiful post: a broad, impressive-looking letter and a newspaper for Mrs Bowater, and a parcel, from Fanny, for me. Time and distance had divided me from the past more than I had supposed. The very sight of her handwriting gave me a qualm. "Fanny! Oh, my Heavens," cried a voice in me, "what's wrong now?"

But removing the brown paper I found only a book, and it being near to my size as books go, I opened it with profound relief. My joy was premature. The book Fanny had sent me was by Bishop Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living and Dying: with Prayers containing the Whole Duty of a Christian. I read over and over this title with a creeping misgiving and dismay, and almost in the same instant, detected, lightly fastened between its fly-leaves, and above its inscription—"To Midgetina: In Memoriam"—an inch or two of paper, pencilled over in Fanny's minutest characters.

A slow, furtive glance discovered Mrs Bowater far too deeply absorbed to have noticed my small movements. She was sitting bolt upright, her forehead drawn crooked in an unusual frown. An open letter lay beside her plate. She was staring into, rather than at, her newspaper. With infinite stealth I slipped Fanny's scrap of paper under the tablecloth, folded it small, and pushed it into my skirt pocket. "A present from Fanny," I cried in a clear voice at last.

But Mrs Bowater, with drooping, pallid face, and gaze now fixed deep on a glass-case containing three stuffed, aquatic birds, had not heard me. I waited, watching her. She folded the newspaper and removed her spectacles. "On our return," she began inconsequently, "the honourable Mrs Monnerie has invited you to stay in her London house—not for a week or two; for good. That's all as it should be, I suppose, seeing that pay's pay and mine is no other call on you."

The automatic voice ceased with a gasp. Her thoughts appeared to be astray. She pushed her knotted fingers up her cheeks almost to her eyes.

"It's said," she added with long, straight mouth, "that that unfortunate young man, Mr Crimble—is ill." She gave a glance at me without appearing to see me, and left the room.

What was amiss? Oh, this world! I sat trembling in empty dread, listening to her heavy, muffled footfall in the room above. The newspaper, with a scrawling cross on its margin, lay beside Mrs Monnerie's large, rough-edged envelope. I could bear the suspense no longer. On hands and knees I craned soundlessly forward over the white tablecloth, across the rank dish of coagulating bacon fat, and stole one or two of the last few lines of grey-black print at the foot of the column: "The reverend gentleman leaves a widowed mother. He was an only son, and was in his twenty-ninth year."

"Leaves"; "was"—the dingy letters blurred my sight. Footsteps were approaching. I huddled back to my carpet stool on the chair. Mrs Petrie had come to clear away the breakfast things. Stonily I listened while she cheerfully informed me that the glass was still rising, that she didn't recollect such weather not for the month for ten years or more. "You must be what I've heard called an 'alcyon, miss." She nodded her congratulations at me, and squinnied at the untasted bacon.

"I am going for a breath of air, Mrs Petrie," came Mrs Bowater's voice through the crack of the door. "Will you kindly be ready for your walk, miss, in half an hour?"

Left once more to myself, I heard the "alarm" clock on the mantelpiece ticking as if every beat were being forced out of its works, and might be its last. An early fly or two—my strange, familiar friends—darted soundlessly beneath the ceiling. The sea was shimmering like an immense looking-glass. More pungent than I had ever remembered it, the refreshing smell of seaweed eddied in at the open window.

With dry mouth and a heart that jerked my body with its beatings, I unfolded Fanny's scrap of paper:—

"Wise M.,—I have thrown the stone. And now I am fey for my own poor head. Could you—and—will you absolutely secretly send me any money you can spare? £15 if possible. I'm in a hole—full fathom five—but mean to get out of it. I ask you, rather than mother, because I remember you said once you were putting money by out of that young lady's independence of yours. Notes would be best: if not, a Post Office Order to this address, somehow. I must trust to luck, and to your wonderful enterprise, if you would be truly a dear. It's only until my next salary. If you can't—or won't—help me, damnation is over my head: but I bequeathe you a kiss all honey and roses none the less, and am, pro tem., your desperate F.

"PS.—Be sure not to give M. this address: and in a week or two we shall all be laughing and weeping together over the Prodigal Daughter."

Fanny, then, had not heard our morning news. I read her scribble again and again for the least inkling of it, my thoughts in disorder. That sprawling cross on the newspaper; this gibbering and dancing as of a skeleton before my eyes; and "the stone," "the stone." What did it mean? The word echoed on in my head as if it had been shouted in a vault. I was deadly frightened and sick, stood up as if to escape, and found only my own distorted face in Mrs Petrie's flower-and-butterfly-painted chimney glass.

"You, you!" my eyes cried out on me. And a furious storm—remorse, grief, horror-broke within. I knew the whole awful truth. Like a Shade in the bright light, Mr Crimble stood there beyond the table, not looking at me, its face turned away. Unspeakable misery bowed my shoulders, chilled my skin.

"But you said 'ill,'" I whispered angrily up at last at Mrs Bowater's bonneted figure in the doorway. "I have looked where the cross is. He is dead!"

She closed the door with both hands and seated herself on a chair beside it.

"I've trapsed that Front, miss—striving to pick up the ends. It doesn't bear thinking of: that poor, misguided young man. It's hid away...."

"What did he die of, Mrs Bowater?" I demanded.

She caught at the newspaper, folded it close, nodded, shook her head. "Four nights ago," she said. And still, some one last shred of devotion—not of fidelity, not of fear, for I longed to pour out my heart to her—sealed my lips. Holy Living and Dying: Holy Living and Dying: I read over and over the faded gilt letters on the cover of Fanny's gift, and she in her mockery, desperate, too. "Damnation"—the word echoed on in my brain.

But poor Mrs Bowater was awaiting no confession from me. She had out-trapsed her strength. When next I looked round at her, the bonneted head lay back against the rose-garlanded wallpaper, the mouth ajar, the eyelids fluttering. It was my turn now—to implore her to "come back": and failing to do so, I managed at last to clamber up and tug at the bell-pull.