aunted," said Chris, and fell forthwith to dreaming as
she stepped along the sunlit sand.

Of course she would find an enchanted hall, peopled by crabs that were
not crabs at all, but the afore-mentioned knight and his retinue, all
bound by the same wicked spell. "And I shall have to find out what it is
and set him free," said Chris, with a sigh of pleasurable anticipation.
"And then, I suppose, he will begin to jabber French, and I shall wish to
goodness I hadn't. I expect he will want to marry me, poor thing! And I
shall have to explain--in French, ugh!--that as he is only a foreigner I
couldn't possibly, under any circumstances, entertain such a preposterous
notion for a single instant. No, I am afraid that would sound rather
rude. How else could I put it?"

Chris's brow wrinkled over the problem. She had reached the outlying
rocks of the belt she had to cross, and was picking her way between the
pools in deep abstraction.

"I wonder!" she murmured to herself. "I wonder!"

Then suddenly her rapt expression broke into a merry smile. "I know!
Of course! Absurdly easy! I shall tell him that I am under a spell
too--bound beyond all chance of escape to marry an Englishman." The sweet
face dimpled over the inspiration. "That ought to settle him, unless he
is very persevering; in which case of course I should have to tell
him--quite kindly--that I really didn't think I could. Fancy marrying a
crab--and a French crab too!"

She began to laugh, gaily, irrepressibly, light-heartedly, and skipped on
to the first weed-covered rock that obstructed her path. It was an
exceedingly slippery perch. She poised herself with arms outspread, with
a butterfly grace as airy as her visions.

Away in the distance Cinders, nearing exhaustion, leaned on one elbow and
scratched spasmodically with his free paw.

"Good-bye, Cinders!" she called to him in her high young voice. "I'm
never coming back any more."

Lightly she waved her hand and sprang for another rock. But her feet
slipped on the seaweed, and she splashed down into a pool ankle-deep.

"Bother!" she said, with vehemence. "It's these silly sandals. I'll leave
them here till I come back."

She scrambled out again and pulled them off. "If I really don't come back
I shan't want them," she reflected, with her merry little smile.

She arranged sandals and towel on the flat surface of a rock and pursued
her pilgrimage unhampered.

She certainly managed better without the sandal