Maud arrived some ten days after this, and received the warmest of welcomes from Lucia.
"Ah! it's too, too splendid," she said; "and if you think, now that I've got you here, that I am going to let you go under a fortnight, you are quite, quite mistaken. Yes, the busman will take all your things to the house—won't you, William?—and you and I will go straight off to the beach till tea-time. It's the biggest, emptiest beach you ever saw; there's nothing there at all but the sea, lying like some great, kind animal. And the house is quite the most ridiculous you ever saw, and you slide off every chair if you are not careful, and Aunt Cathie wades. Isn't it heavenly of her? Oh, you've never seen her, have you? so you can't yet grasp how heavenly it is; and Aunt Elizabeth played patience on the beach yesterday, and a gust of wind came, and all the cards rose up like at the end of 'Alice in Wonderland.' Now you may talk for one minute, and then I shall begin again."
The arrears of general events were soon cleared off, and after a stroll along the beach, the two sat down on the hot, dry sand, and the talk became more intimate.
"Yes, I turned over a new leaf soon after I went down to Brixham," said Lucia, "and it all became so much pleasanter. But, you see, you do naturally what I had to make a great effort to do."
Maud's grey, grave eyes looked with admiring devotion at Lucia, as she sat with legs crossed, like some graceful boy, pouring the dry sand through her fingers in the fashion of an hourglass.
"And what's that?" she asked.
"You know. You are naturally unselfish, and you don't have to think about other people and their wants and desires. The thinking does itself with you, and you just go and do the things. Now, I have first of all to make myself think, and then make myself do the things. You are nice inside, as I told you before, and I am not. People can't help loving you; but I have to go through all my tricks before they love me. Even then they don't always."
Maud laughed.
"Oh, Lucia, what dreadful nonsense you talk!" she said. "You whom everybody has fought for, so to speak, and done their best to spoil! And they haven't succeeded one atom. Even I haven't succeeded in spoiling you."
Lucia let her hands go wide, dropping the sand that was in them.
