The Argosy — page 158: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

146 By the Sad Sea Waves. in his face. ‘Thanks for your kind exertions,” he adds to Ottalie, who blushes furiously, and makes no reply. Raising his hat again, he walks his way, and we walk ours. Glancing back, I see 2 man in rough costume approach him. “Good gracious, that must be Michael!” I say. ‘ He will want to charge us for the boat.” Ottalie turns upon me savagely. ‘‘ Deborah, you are an idiot! Had you only held your tongue, he would never have found us out— never. What does it matter if he did take us for the boat-girls ?” “ Had you not better tell me it was my fault we took the boat at all?” I retort. “I wish you would not do these things.” “What a good-looking man he is!” We walk home in silence, for I don’t answer her. Ottalie hates re- proach, but she is a little ashamed of the escapade herself. In time we learn that the stranger’s name is Daine; he is apparently well-to-do, and is supposed to have come to this little out-of-the-world place, Sone, for a spell of quietness. He lives at the hotel, pays liberally, and ‘‘keeps himself to himself,” occupying his time with boating and fishing. It is I who hear these items of news, and I try to impart them to Ottalie, but she will not listen. Meanwhile, if by chance we meet the stranger, he lifts his hat in silence, and gazes at Ottalie as he passes. Probably, just as we have heard his name, he has heard ours, and knows that we are not Michael’s daughters, but the Miss Peyres. And each time this meeting occurs, Ottalie's blushes grow more ridiculous. It makes me angry with her. Three Sundays come and go. On the fourth we see our schoolboy cousin, Keith Harland, who has come down to Sone with his mother. Mrs. Harland looks frostily blue, and does not even give us the tips of her fingers to shake. Of course, she did not know we were at Sone, for we co not enlighten the world as to our movements. Her dead husband was our mother’s cousin; so the relationship to her is not much ; but what itis she is ashamed of. The scrambling, moving- about, shady kind of life that Ottalie and I lead does not enhance our worth in her eyes. Lead it we must, however, until the end comes and the “finis” is said. And then? Well, perhaps, in the Great Hereafter Ottalie and I may attain to respectability. On Monday morning Keith comes rushing into our lodgings, all ex- citement. “I say, Ottalie, what do you think?” he cries. “Who do you think is here ?” “‘ Who is?” asks she, from her place on the music stool. “Jasper Daine. I have just seen him.” Ottalie strums away and does‘not answer. She is as red as the poppies outside. le “ Who is Jasper Daine?” I question. ‘ comiichooks.com