ps they passed the last house, and--

_Bang_!--_boom_!--_swirl_!

A large wave struck the shore on a boulder slope and sent a deluge of
water across the road, to strike the rock on the other side, and run
back like a stream.

Arthur, was sent staggering, and would have fallen but for his father's
hand; and all three, but for their shiny garb, would have been soaked
from head to foot.

"Oh, here's a game!" cried Dick. "I say, Taff--run--run--here comes
another."

They escaped part of the wave, but Dick had his weather ear full, and
the sea-water and foam streamed down their backs as they stood in the
shelter of a bit of cliff.

"Well, Arthur, what do you say to your oilskins now?" said Mr Temple.

"They're dreadfully stiff, father, and the boots are too large," said
Arthur ungraciously. "Hadn't we better get back?"

Poor Arthur repented his words most bitterly as soon as he had spoken
them, for there was a hard light going on in the boy's mind. Naturally
very conceited, he had had the misfortune to be made the head of a
little set at his school--a little set, for they were rather small boys,
who looked up to him,--and dressed at him as far as they could, the
effect being to make him more conceited still, and think his brother
rough and common in his ways.

All this had been pointed out to Mr Temple, who, however, had seen it
for himself, and he only said, smiling:

"It will all settle itself. These little spines will get knocked off by
contact with the world. Besides which I hope that he will find out for
himself the way to grow into a manly man."

Mr Temple was quite right, and Arthur was beginning to discover that,
where his brother was met with a genial smile by all whom he
encountered, he, who was particular and precise and, as he considered
it, gentlemanly in his ways, was either not noticed, or met with merely
the coldest reception.

He was learning too that a man--especially an Englishman, whether gentle
or simple--born in the lap of luxury, as people call it, or in the
humblest cot, must be one who will always keep up the credit of the
nation at large by being thoroughly English; and this brings one to the
question--while the storm is raging on the Cornish coast, and Arthur
Temple is in his glistening oilskins walking stiffly and awkwardly, and
wincing beneath his father's look, which said as plainly as look could
speak, "If you are afraid you can go back;"--this brings one to the task
of sta