sun is shining.

'Oh this is perfect!' I exclaimed to Gertrud; for on a fine fresh
morning one must exclaim to somebody. She was behind me on the narrow
path, her arms full of towels and bathing things. 'Won't you bathe too,
afterwards, Gertrud? Can you resist it?'

But Gertrud evidently could resist it very well. She glanced at the
living loveliness of the sea with an eye that clearly saw in it only a
thing that made dry people wet. If she had been Dr. Johnson she would
boldly have answered, 'Madam, I hate immersion.' Being Gertrud, she
pretended that she had a cold.

'Well, to-morrow then,' I said hopefully; but she said colds hung about
her for days.

'Well, as soon as you have got over it,' I said, persistently and
odiously hopeful; but she became prophetic and said she would never get
over it.

The bathing-huts are in a row far enough away from the shore to be in
deep water. You walk out to them along a little footbridge of planks and
find a sunburnt woman, amiable as all the people seem to be who have
their business in deep waters, and she takes care of your things and
dries them for you and provides you with anything you have forgotten and
charges you twenty _pfennings_ at the end for all her attentions as well
as the bathe. The farthest hut is the one to get if you can--another
invaluable hint. It is very roomy, and has a sofa, a table, and a big
looking-glass, and one window opening to the south and one to the east.
Through the east window you see the line of low cliffs with the woods
above till they melt into a green plain that stretches off into
vagueness towards the haze of Thiessow. Through the south window you see
the little island of Vilm, with its one house set about with cornfields,
and its woods on the high ground at the back.

Gertrud sat on the steps knitting while I swam round among the
jelly-fish and thought of Marianne North. How right she was about the
bathing, and the colours, and the crystal clearness of the water in that
sandy cove! The bathing woman leaned over the hand-rail watching me with
a sympathetic smile. She wore a white sun-bonnet, and it looked so well
against the sky that I wished Gertrud could be persuaded to put one on
too in place of her uninteresting and eminently respectable black
bonnet. I could have stayed there for hours, perfectly happy, floating
on the sparkling stuff, and I did stay there for nearly one, with the
result that I climbed up the cliff a chilled and sa