over; she stooped and kissed him on the brow, and was in the act to
turn away, as a tear dropped on his forehead. Her little bare feet were
peeping out from under her dress. He bent down and kissed them again and
again; and then looking up, as if to excuse himself,--

"You have such pretty feet, mother!"

Instantly, with a woman's instinct, she had hidden them. She had been a
beauty once, as I said; and though her hair was gray, and her roses had
faded long ago, she was beautiful still, in all eyes which saw deeper
than the mere outward red and white.

"Your dear father used to say so thirty years ago."

"And I say so still: you always were beautiful; you are beautiful now."

"What is that to you, silly boy? Will you play the lover with an old
mother? Go and take your walk, and think of younger ladies, if you can
find any worthy of you."

And so the son went forth, and the mother returned to her prayers.

He walked down to the pebble ridge, where the surges of the bay have
defeated their own fury, by rolling up in the course of ages a rampart
of gray boulder-stones, some two miles long, as cunningly curved, and
smoothed, and fitted, as if the work had been done by human hands, which
protects from the high tides of spring and autumn a fertile sheet of
smooth, alluvial turf. Sniffing the keen salt air like a young sea-dog,
he stripped and plunged into the breakers, and dived, and rolled, and
tossed about the foam with stalwart arms, till he heard himself hailed