The Argosy — page 237: what you’re looking at

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

A STORY OF THE SEA-SHORE. URELY she was one of the fairest of fair women, as she stood before the small mirror of her little chamber, brushing out her bronze-brown hair, and threading: it through and through with her comb and her supple fingers, until it floated over her shoulders and down her back like a gilded banner of finest silk. Sometimes it was her whim to wear it so, especially on those days when she had taken a morning plunge in the sea. Then, when her simple toilet was complete, she glanced finally at the mirror, and smiled at the bright image reflected in it. A dazzling, bewildering, alluring image it was, despite the plain fresh print robe, girded at the waist, with only a bit of white at wrist and neck, and a spray of green seaweed twisted in the lovely hair. The plainest and the poorest of apparel could not have dimmed the lustre of those wonderful, fathomless eyes, could not steal the luscious bloom from those rare, sweet lips, or alter the marble beauty of the whole exquisite face. The loosely girded robe only seemed to display the grace of her rounded figure; no young duchess, in all her gorgeous apparel, ever moved with more queenly grace than did this beautiful, inexperienced girl, Serena- Moncton, the fisherman’s daughter. It was what Hugh Moncton pleased to call himself—a fisherman—but he was not as the common fishermen of the place for all that. = Serena, taking a last look at herself, ran down the narrow stairs, and turned into the wide, sunny kitchen of this cottage by the sea. Her father was much addicted to sitting in it, rather than in the adjoining little room, be-carpeted and be-ornamented, that he called Serena’s parlour. The door stood open to the beach, and to the sea beyond it, and Moncton sat looking out and smoking his pipe as he did so. Morning, noon and night would that pipe be in his mouth ; it seemed to be his chiefest solace. He was a thin, stooping man, with a look of care on his face, and iron-grey hair. His dress was exactly that of the working fishermen of the place, save that the blue ~ clothes were all whole, and not patched. ‘Going out, Serena?” he said, as she passed him. “T thought I’d go over and see how the poor widow Janes is, father,” she turned back to say. ‘I have not been yet to-day.” ‘Ay, go, child. If the Who’s this, coming up ?” ‘It is Tom Reece,” she answered, after glancing round. And © .she came back into the kitchen again. Great, big-hearted, fair-faced, but somewhat simple Tom Reece, halted at the open door. He had a flat basket of fish in his hand, Gomicbooks