he
announced, as original, ideas and discoveries that reflected her own
dreams in the past. Sometimes she thought he was catching up; sometimes,
again, she distanced him and felt herself grown up and Raymond still a
boy. Then, sometimes, he would flush a covey of ideas outside her
reflections, and so remind her of the things that interested men, in
which, as yet, women took no interest. When he spoke of such things, she
strove to learn all that he could teach concerning them. But soon she
found that was not much. He did not think deeply and she quickly caught
him up, if she desired to do so.

Now he uttered just the same, trivial lament that she had uttered when
she was a child. She was pleased, for she rather loved to feel herself
older in mind than Raymond. It added a lustre to friendship and made her
happy--why, she knew not.

"What a wretched end--to be choked up in the shingle like that," he
said, "instead of dashing out gloriously and losing yourself in the
sea!"

She smiled gently to herself.

"I thought that once, then I was ever so sorry for poor little Bride."

"A bride without a wedding," he said.

"No. She steals to him; she wins his salt kisses and finds them sweet
enough. They mate down deep out of sight of all eyes. So you needn't be
sorry for her really."

"It's like watching people try ever so hard to do something and never
bring it off."

"Yes--even more like than you think, Ray; because we feel sad at such
apparent failures, and yet what we are looking at may be a victory
really, only our dull eyes miss it."

"I daresay many people are succeeding who don't appear to be," he
admitted.

"Goodness can't be wasted. It may be poured into the sand all unseen and
unsung; but it conquers somehow and does something worth doing, even
though no eye can see what. Plenty of good things happen in the
world--good and helpful things--that are never recorded, or even
recognised."

"Like a stonewaller in a cricket match. The people cuss him, but he may
determine who is going to win."

She laughed at the simile.

They went homeward presently, Estelle quietly content to have shown
Raymond the flower-sprinkled strand, and he well pleased to have
pleasured her.

CHAPTER III

A TWIST FRAME

Raymond Ironsyde grumbled sometimes at the Factory Act and protested
against grandmotherly legislation. Yet in some directions he anticipated
it. He went, for example, beyond the Flax Mill Ventilation Reg