Part 8 (1/2)

”Evidently a most intelligent dog,” observed the Prince, gravely.

”You think so?” asked Susie, her colour deepening just the faintest bit.

”Ah, here is the owner, now,” she added, as a little faded old woman came panting up.

”Oh, thank you, mademoiselle!” cried the newcomer, s.n.a.t.c.hing the dog from Susie's arms. ”Thank you! He was a bad boy--he run away!” and she held him close against her heart.

”It was nothing,” protested Susie. ”I am very glad I happened to be just here. Though I don't suppose that either I or the dog was in danger of being eaten,” she added to Markeld, as the little old woman trotted tremulously away. ”Your dog doesn't look especially ferocious.”

”Still, I beg a thousand pardons,” repeated the Prince. ”I should have kept my eye on him. Come here, Jax,” he called, ”and make your apologies to the ladies.”

Jax crawled up very humbly and Susie stooped and patted his head.

”Poor Jax,” she said. ”It wasn't your fault, I know. I'm sure that little spaniel insulted you!”

Jax licked her hand gratefully, and the Prince looked on with an admiration he did not attempt to conceal.

”Would you like him?” he asked, eagerly.

Susie started up with crimsoning cheeks.

”No, thank you,” she said, and taking her sister's arm, she walked on, chin in air.

The Prince gazed after her, wide-eyed, for a moment, then turned resolutely and continued on his way.

”Well,” began Nell, at the end of a minute, ”he quite took my breath away!”

”Which he?” queried Sue.

”Both of them; but the first especially. That kick bespoke football training.”

”And he has evidently kept in condition,” added Sue. ”The owner of the dog wasn't a bad-looking fellow, either--interesting, too, I haven't a doubt, and I do like interesting people! But the nerve of him--offering me his dog! I'm afraid we need a chaperon, after all, my dear.”

”Yes,” agreed Nell, ”perhaps we do. But it would be an awful bother.”

They walked on to the end of the beach, then mounted to the Digue and strolled slowly back toward the hotel, enjoying the breeze, the colour, the suns.h.i.+ne, the strange and varied life of the place.

Stretching along the landward side of the d.y.k.e stood a row of little houses, green and pink and white, with tile roofs mounting steeply upward, their red surfaces broken by innumerable dormers. These had once been the homes of honest and industrious fishermen, but time had changed all that. They had been remodelled to suit the demands of business, and every house had now on the lower floor an expensive little shop with monsieur sitting complacently at the door and madame, fat and voluble, at the money-drawer, and on the floor above, a still more expensive suite of rooms to let--rooms panelled in white and gold, resplendent with rococo mouldings, and crowded with abominable furniture, intended to be coquettish--gilt chairs, scalloped tables, embroidered lambrequins, ottomans smothered in plush and fringe, beds draped with curtains until they were all but air-tight--in effect more French than France.

Here and there between the houses, a glimpse might be had of the low country beyond, with its sluggish ca.n.a.l choked with rushes, a dingy windmill here and there, and stretching away on either side the flat meadows crinkling with yellow grain, and the green pastures dotted with huge black-and-white cattle. A narrow road, straight as a line in Euclid, and bordered by a row of trees each the counterpart of all the others, mounted toward the horizon, leading, princ.i.p.ally, to a low, yellow house about a mile away, displaying above its door the appropriate motto, ”l.u.s.t en Rust.” There, either in the cool, vine-shaded garden, in the long, low-ceilinged dining-room, or in some smaller and more ornate apartment, one might breakfast, dine, what not, in the fas.h.i.+on of the country--which, for the most part, meant the drinking of a muddy liquid with an unp.r.o.nounceable name and the eating of wafelen and poffertjes, and of little cheeses calculated to appal the strongest stomach.

The shops and the landscape--the cosmopolitan crowd with its Babel of many tongues--the great hotels, built of stucco in the nouveau-riche style so rasping to sensitive nerves--the striped awnings, the low balconies, the gaudy house-fronts--all these our heroines looked at and commented on and revelled in with the joy of fresh and unspoiled youth.

It was life they were tasting--strange, interesting, intoxicating life--and they drank deep of it.

As they neared the hotel entrance, they saw coming from the other direction, pushed by two men, an invalid chair. They stood aside to let it pa.s.s, and its occupant, carefully wrapped in a great steamer-rug, glanced up at them with a quizzical light in his eyes.

They shrank back together against the wall with a simultaneous gasp of dismay, for the invalid was their athletic rescuer of an hour before.