out of bed and pull up
the blind, so that he could look out on the calm sea, which looked
pearly and grey and rosy in the morning sunshine. Great patches of mist
were floating here and there, hiding the luggers and shutting out
headlands, and everywhere the shores looked so beautiful that the lad
dressed hurriedly, donning an old suit of tweed, the flannels he had
worn the day before being somewhere in the kitchen, where they were hung
up to dry.
"I'd forgotten all about that," said Dick to himself. "I wonder where
Will Marion is, and whether he'd go for a bathe."
Dick looked out on the calm sea, and wondered how anything could have
been so awful looking as it seemed the night before.
"It must have been out there," he thought, as he looked at the sun-lit
bay, then at the engine-houses far up on the hills and near the cliff,
and these set him thinking about his father's mission in Cornwall.
"I wonder whether father will begin looking at the mines to-day!" he
said to himself. "I should like to know what time it is! I wonder
whether Will Marion is up yet, and--Hallo! what's this?"
Dick had caught sight of something lying on the table beside his
brother's neat little dressing-case--a small leather affair containing
brush, comb, pomatum, and scent-bottles, tooth-brushes, nail-brushes,
and the usual paraphernalia used by gentlemen who shave, though Arthur
Temple's face was as smooth as that of a little girl of nine.
Dick took up the something, which was of leather, and in the shape of a
porte-monnaie with gilt metal edges, and on one side a gilt shield upon
which was engraved, in flourishing letters, "AT."
"Old Taffs started a cigar-case," said Dick, bursting into a guffaw. "I
wonder whether--yes--five!" he added, as he opened the case and saw five
cigars tucked in side by side and kept in their places by a leather
band. "What a game! I'll smug it and keep it for ever so long. He
ought not to smoke."
Just then the handle of the door rattled faintly, the door was thrust
open, and as Dick scuffled the cigar-case into his breast-pocket Mr
Temple appeared, coming in very cautiously so as not to disturb his sick
son.
Dick did not know it, but his father had been in four times during the
night to lay a hand upon his forehead and listen to his breathing, and
he started now in astonishment.
"What, up, Dick?" he said in a low voice, after a glance at the bed,
where Arthur was sleeping soundly.
"Yes, f
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