been farther south at all events, the old
sailor said:

"Well, well! Think of that now! But wasn't I always telling the
omadhauns what you'd be doing some day?"

Then with a "glime" of his "starboard eye" in my direction he said:

"You haven't got a woman yet though? . . . No, I thought not. You're
like myself, boy--there's not many of them sorts _in_ for you."

After that, and a more undisguised look my way, the old man talked about
me, still calling me the "lil misthress" and saying they were putting a
power of gold on my fingers, but he would be burning candles to the
miracles of God to see the colour of it in my cheeks too.

"She's a plant that doesn't take kindly to a hot-house same as this,"
(indicating the house) "and she'll not be thriving until somebody's
bedding her out, I'm thinking."

It was Saturday, and after dinner Martin proposed that we should walk to
the head of the cliff to see Blackwater by night, which was a wonderful
spectacle, people said, at the height of the season, so I put a silk
wrap over my head and we set out together.

There was no moon and few stars were visible, but it was one of those
luminous nights in summer which never forget the day. Therefore we
walked without difficulty along the white winding path with its nutty
odour of the heather and gorse until we came near the edge of the cliff,
and then suddenly the town burst upon our view, with its promenades,
theatres, and dancing palaces ablaze with electric light, which was
reflected with almost equal brilliance in the smooth water of the bay.

We were five miles from Blackwater, but listening hard we thought we
could hear, through the boom of the sea on the dark cliffs below us, the
thin sounds of the bands that were playing in the open-air pavilions,
and looking steadfastly we thought we could see, in the black patches
under the white light, the movement of the thousands of persons who were
promenading along "the front."

This led Martin to talk of my father, saying as we walked back, with the
dark outlines of the sleeping mountains confronting us, what a
marvellous man he had been to transform in twenty years the little
fishing and trading port into a great resort for hundreds of thousands
of pleasure-seekers.

"But is he any better or happier for the wealth it has brought him, and
for the connections he has bought with it? Is anybody any better?" said
Martin.

"I know one who isn't," I answered.

I had not meant to