Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/373

of the carriage, she could, before they came back from their drive, strike up a sort of acquaintance with. The beauty of the day only deepened, and the splendor of the afternoon sea, and the haze of the far headlands, and the taste of the sweet air. It was the coachman indeed who, smiling and cracking his whip, turning in his place, pointing to invisible objects and uttering unintelligible sounds—all, our tourists recognized, strict features of a social order principally devoted to language; it was this charming character who made their excursion fall so much short that their return left them still a stretch of the long daylight and an hour that, at his obliging suggestion, they spent on foot on the shining sands. Maisie had seen the plage the day before with Sir Claude, but that was a reason the more for showing on the spot to Mrs. Wix, that it was, as she said, another of the places on her list, and of the things of which she knew the French name. The bathers, so late, were absent, and the tide was low; the sea-pools twinkled in the sunset, and there were dry places, as well, where they could sit again and admire and expatiate: a circumstance that, while they listened to the