CHAPTER II.
Christmas Day was the same as any other to Sprague. At seven o'clock the alarm, when in order, commenced to ring, and he stopped its clamor with a toothbrush wedged between the hammer shaft and the bell, rolled out of bed, set the kettle on the kerosene stove, and rolled in again, to sleep soundly, in spite of the sunshine streaming into the room, until half past eight or nine.
Awaking for the second time, he rose with a more determined air, and, after splashing under a shower bath composed of a riddled kerosene tin suspended from the rain-water tank, proceeded to boil two eggs in the kettle, muttering maledictions as he fished for them through a cloud of steam.
Breakfast was eaten to the accompaniment of light reading from a magazine propped against the sugar basin; and washing up—that most odious of household duties—was relegated to a dreaded future by piling the day's accumulated dirty dishes on a side table, where the flies held high festival until evening.
The solemn rite of shaving then followed, the razor being wiped on a sheet of typewritten paper from an inexhaustible supply behind the chest of drawers; and finally Sprague emerged on the veranda, to gaze upon the morning and shower opprobrious epithets by way of greeting on the squirming Robert.
In the ordinary course of events, he would have now flung a towel and a bathing suit over his shoulder and gone down to the sea; but this morning he was aware of a vaguely disquieting sense of incompleteness. Something remained to be done.
With the lighting of his pipe remembrance came to him.
“Gad, it's Christmas! Confound that plum pudding!”
It meant a complete upheaval of the day's routine, a postponement of the bath, an interference with the afternoon nap, and consequent interruption of the work. Mentally Sprague looked down the dreary vista of a wasted day, wasted purely for the sake of a mass of unappetizing and probably indigestible dough. Still, even with the thermometer at ninety in the shade, and a shimmering heat haze hovering over land and sea, it was Christmas Day, and as such demanded plum pudding of every Britisher from Cooktown to London,
Not until three o'clock in the afternoon did he again emerge, perspiring, but vindicated, to catch his towel and bathing suit from the line and whistle Robert from fly-catching operations on the veranda mat.
The sea lay before him, a shimmering sheet of incredible blue; and far off up the stretch of sandy beach a scattered, multicolored crowd watched the bathers sporting in the surf, or listened to the band in the shade of the corso pines.
But Sprague had neither eye nor ear for these things; he had found a paradise of his own, and, following a narrow, winding path round the hillside, he at last came upon it, hidden among the sandstone rocks at the cliff foot—a tiny inlet, complete with sandy beach, blue, transparent waters, and raft anchored out beyond the breakers.
Whom it all belonged to had at one time been a subject of speculation with Sprague. An indistinct track led from the beach straight up the cliff face to a low, rambling house almost covered with creepers, and half hidden by an avenue of blue gums and abortive date palms; but he had long since given up troubling about the matter, partly because it was obviously impossible for anything but a goat to climb the cliff, and partly because he never troubled himself about anything if it could be avoided.
His undressing was a study in economy of exertion; then he waded into the surf, dived through the first respectable wave that presented itself, and headed for the raft with what he fondly imagined to be the Australian “crawl stroke.” This necessitated an ungainly flapping of his legs and the almost complete immersion of his head; otherwise he would probably have seen what now met his gaze for the first time—a head bobbing serenely on the farther side of the raft, and a face that he instantly recognized, turned apprehensively toward him.
But Sprague was used to emergencies,
“Merry Christmas!” he said cheerfully, climbed onto the raft, and sank, dripping, on the rickety seat.
The owner of the head looked up at him with a little, wet smile.
“The same to you,” she said, still clinging to the ladder, “although I haven't the faintest idea who you are.”
“Does it matter?” Sprague queried earnestly. “Would you deny me a Merry Christmas simply because you don't know who I am?”
The girl regarded him with a glance of delicious uncertainty.
“Is that a joke?”
“Heaven forbid!” he protested. “But why were you hiding behind the raft? You nearly scared me out of my wits.”
“I'm so sorry,” she consoled. “But you didn't look very frightened. You see, I wondered who you could be when I saw you start out from the shore, and—and I didn't quite know what to do,” she ended lamely.
“But now,” said Sprague grandiloquently, “the mystery is solved. There's no need to hide any longer. I am I.”
“How very enlightening!' she murmured appreciatively.
“I'm certain you're cold,” he observed paternally, “and you're far too puffed to get back to shore without a rest; why don't you climb up and sun yourself on the 'anxious seat'? It sways perilously, but it's wonderfully resting.”
The girl blushed.
“Are you a married man?” she queried irrelevantly, and for the first time Sprague noticed that her lips were tinged with a faint blue, and that the hands holding the ladder were unnaturally white.
“You're simply perishing,” he remonstrated sternly. “Come out at once!”
“Are you easily shocked?”
“If you don't come out I shall plunge into the cold, green depths before I have thoroughly warmed up, get cramp halfway to shore, and”
“I wear boy's bathing things,” she explained breathlessly as Sprague helped her up the ladder onto the raft, where she sank on the seat at his side.
“Awful thought!” he said. “And now if you will kindly give me your hands, one at a time, I'll try and rub a little life back into them.”
“You see,” she explained, her voice coming in little jerks from the vigor of his rubbing, “I wear these things because I had always looked upon this as my cove.”
“Quite natural—quite,” Sprague admitted airily.
“You see, father owns the land, and I own the raft.”
“How awfully nice!” he added enthusiastically.
“So that strangers are really trespassing.”
“Of course. Poor strangers!”
Her lips pouted faintly.
“Oh, they don't need to be pitied. There are lots of good coves farther round the cliff, and there's Manly, with a beach a mile long, if they only care to go there.”
“Yes, I suppose they could,” admitted Sprague judicially; “but all the same—poor strangers! Poor, poor strangers!”
A little white foot tapped the bare boards impatiently.
“You hold yourself comfortably aloof,” she remarked scathingly.
“From what?”
“From the strangers.”
“Naturally.”
“Why?”
“Well, I can afford to; I am I, you see.”
Sprague could see only the back of her neck, yet he could have sworn she smiled.
“I give it up,” she said wearily, “The conceit of it!” And she plunged into the sea.
He waited until the pale-green legs had kicked their delicious owner a few yards from the raft, and then he followed.
It took an hour to establish the fact that he was not a stranger, but the time was well spent. The next obstacle was a trifle more difficult of approach. The girl sat in the hot sand, gazing far out to sea, her little, olive-brown face puckered about the eyes with the glare from the water. Sprague sprawled at her feet.
“But I'm not sure it's proper,” she suggested, with a puzzled frown; “just you and me in bathing suits in my cove.”
“As well complain at finding ourselves with wings in paradise,” he suggested; “besides, it makes all the difference—you being you, and I being I!”
“You're wonderfully comforting,” she admitted. “But, after all, I suppose it's all right. I'm engaged, you know.”
Sprague's face betrayed not so much as the flutter of an eyelid.
“What an extraordinary thing!” he exclaimed vigorously. “So am I.”
Whether it was the strong light from the water, or whether—at any rate, the girl allowed her attention to wander from the sea and fix itself on a handful of sand that trickled through her fingers.
“But I don't think he would mind,” she added thoughtfully.
“And I'm certain she would have no objection,” Sprague agreed.
At this juncture Robert emerged from the rocks, where he had been conducting a minute search for lizards. He trotted straight to the girl, with a broad smile, and her arms went about his shaggy neck.
“Rags—Rags!” she cried.
“From the warmth of your greeting, I should have thought an introduction unnecessary,” Sprague observed, “but I see there is some mistake; his name is not Rags, but Robert—Robert for at least a month, and thereafter—if by that time your mutual affection warrants the familiarity—Bob.”
“O-oh!” said the girl. “And what is he?”
“He is a cocker spaniel,” said Sprague.
“But isn't his coat too long, and isn't he too big? Look at the length of his body, and his head”
“He is a cocker spaniel,” repeated Sprague, gazing out to sea.
The girl edged nearer to him in the sand. He could feel, though not see, the movement.
“I'm sorry,” she said, and the apology sounded almost boyish. “Of course he's a cocker spaniel.”
Sprague turned toward her, and they laughed simultaneously the laugh of mutual understanding. There followed a pause, during which the girl traced idle patterns in the sand with a broken shell. Presently she looked up, and her eyes held a suspicion of a twinkle in their depths.
“What's she like?” she demanded abruptly,
“Oh—ah, yes,” stammered Sprague, and pondered the matter, lying back on the sand with half-closed eyes.
“I see,” he droned oracularly, “I see her hair, It is even as seaweed, straggling over a rounded rock and caught in a tangled knot at its base. Her eyes protrude; yes, like those of the toad do they start from her head until spectacles bring them to a standstill. Her nose and forehead shine with intelligence and indigestion. Her neck is like unto a spiral stairway, and at her throat flourisheth a mole that would answer admirably as a collar stud. Her form is a”
“You're a beast!” said the girl viciously. “Even if you have thrown her over, you needn't”
“But I haven't,” Sprague protested. “That is—I don't think so.”
The girl's eyebrows met at an acute angle.
“You're surely not going—going on with it if you think that of her!”
“Necessity knows no law,” he defended. “My worthy father considers it advantageous; we have the property—she has the money. I shall be the martyr of the family. My effigy will adorn the stained-glass window in the east wing.”
The girl dug her hand vigorously into the sand, which pressed a gold bangle farther and farther up her arm.
“I think you're a beast!” she reiterated, with added conviction. “And I'm very, very sorry for—her. She deserves the stained-glass window.”
“How about poor little me?” Sprague suggested humbly.
The curl of her lip was good to see.
“We don't do things like that in Australia Any man worth his salt would get out and work with his hands before he'd do that.”
“That's the trouble,” Sprague admitted resignedly. “If I had been reared in Australia, life, so far as I am concerned, would have taken a completely different aspect. My nature would have been sunny, my disposition”
“You would have had to work,” she repeated, with emphasis; “that's all the difference there would have been.”
Sprague buried his face in his hands.
“Thus,” he wailed, “thus is my first puny effort—the struggling seedling of industry that might—who knows?—have grown to the full maturity of mighty accomplishment—crushed at birth beneath the relentless heel of disparagement, nipped in the bud by the cold scissors of”
The girl's eyes grew round with sudden interest; Sprague could see them through his fingers.
“You don't mean to say you do something?” she demanded incredulously.
“I'm trying to. Why not?” he pleaded brokenly.
“Well, you look—I mean, I never knew an Englishman who—no—oh, I'm so sorry!”
Was it sand, or was it the warm touch of a sympathetic hand that brushed his arm for the fraction of a second?
“You are trying, and it's not a success? I am sorry! But what is it? Do tell me all about it.”
“I will,” said Sprague, “on one condition—that you take afternoon tea with me at the Haven. I ate my Christmas dinner alone, and it was not a success.”
The girl looked frankly pleased.
“I'd love to,” she said; “but”
“Come to the asylum,” Sprague tempted, “and I will prove to you that I am crazier than even the inhabitants of Queenscliff imagine.”
The girl laughed.
“That settles it,” she said; “but I must see if father is home yet. If he is I can't come; if he isn't I can.”
Sprague watched her scrambling up the cliff track, then turned to Robert with a look of interogation.
Robert smiled.