he look of the broad sea
rolling on to the shore had a curious effect upon her strange nature. It
touched her indescribably. It filled that scarcely awakened little soul
of hers with longings. After all, it might be worth while to be good. She
did not know why the sea made her long to be good; nevertheless it did.
Her face became really pale.

"Are you tired, dear?" asked Miss Tredgold, noticing the curious look on
the expressive little face.

"Oh, no, not that," replied Pen; "but I have never seen the sea before."

Miss Tredgold felt that she understood. Pauline also understood. Verena
did not think about the matter. It was Verena's habit to take the sweets
of life as they came, to be contented with her lot, to love beauty for
its own sake, to keep a calm mind and a calm body through all
circumstances. She had accepted the sea as a broad, beautiful fact in her
life some weeks ago. She was not prepared for Pen's emotion, nor did she
understand it. She kept saying to herself:

"Nurse is right after all; it was not mere fancy. Little Penelope is not
well. A day or two on the sands in this glorious air will soon put her
straight."

Pauline, however, thought that she did understand her little sister. For
to Pauline, from the first day she had arrived at Easterhaze, the sea had
seemed to cry to her in one incessant, reiterating voice:

"Come, wash and be clean. Come, lave yourself in me, and leave your
naughtiness and your deceits and your black, black lies behind."

And Pauline felt, notwithstanding her present happiness and her long days
of health and vigor and glee, that she was disobeying the sea, for she
was not washing therein, nor getting herself clean in all that waste of
water. The old cry awoke again in her heart with an almost cruel
insistence.

"Come, wash and be clean," cried the sea.

"I declare, Pauline, you are looking almost as pale as your sister," said
Miss Tredgold. "Well, here we are. Now, Pen," she added, turning to
Penelope, "I hope you will enjoy yourself. I certainly did not intend to
ask you to join us, but as nurse said you were not well, and as your own
extremely funny letter seemed to express the same thing, I thought it
best to ask you here."

"And you did quite right, Aunty Sophy," said Penelope.

Then the look of the sea faded from her eyes, and she became once again a
suspicious, eager, somewhat deceitful little girl. Once again the subtle
and naughty things of life took possessi