Captain Copp was a true sailor, gifted with more good nature than common sense. On the rare occasion of receiving a young lady visitor under his roof, his hospitality and his heart alike ran riot. Anna Chester, the pretty, friendless girl whom he had heard of but never seen, was coming to him and his wife to be nursed into strength and health, and the captain anticipated the arrival as something to be made a fête of.

A feast too, by appearances. It was a bright summer morning, with a fresh breeze blowing from the sea; and the captain was abroad betimes with some flowing purple ribbons fastened round his glazed hat. Greatly to the grievance of Mrs. Copp: who had ventured to say that Anna was not a captured prize-ship, or a battle won, or even a wedding, that she should be rejoiced over to the extent of streamers. All of which Captain Copp was deaf to. He started by the ten o\'clock omnibus for Jutpoint, having undertaken first of all to send home provisions for dinner. A pair of soles and two pounds of veal cutlet had been meekly suggested by Mrs. Copp.

The morning wore on. Sarah, the middle-aged, hard-featured, sensible-looking, thoroughly capable woman-servant, who was bold enough to dispute with her master, and not in the least to care at being likened to pirates and other disrespectful things, stood in the kitchen making a gooseberry pudding, when the butcher-boy came in without the ceremony of announcing himself; unless a knocking and pushing of his tray against the back-door posts, through awkwardness, could be called such.

"Some dishes, please," said he.

"Dishes!" retorted Sarah, who had one of the strongest tongues in Coastdown. "Dishes for what?"

"For this here meat. The captain have just been in and bought it, and master have sent it up."

He displayed some twelve or fifteen pounds of meat--beef, veal, lamb. Sarah\'s green eyes--good, honest, pleasant eyes in the main--glistened.

"Then your master\'s a fool. Didn\'t I tell him not to pay attention to the captain when he took these freaks in his head?" she demanded. "When he goes and buys up the whole shop--as he did one day last winter because he was expecting a old mate of his down--your master\'s not to notice him no more nor if he was a child. An uncommon soft you must be, to bring up all them joints! Did you think you was supplying the Red Court? Just you march back with \'em."

There was an interruption. While the boy stood staring at the meat, hardly knowing what to do, and rubbing his fingers amidst his shining black hair, Mrs. Copp entered the kitchen, and became acquainted with the state of affairs. She wore a pale muslin gown, as faded as her gentle self, with pale green ribbons.

"Dear me," she meekly cried, "all that meat! We could not get through the half of it while it was good? Do you think, James, your master would have any objection to take it back?"

"Objection! He\'ll take it back, ma\'am, whether he has any objection or not," cried the positive Sarah. "Now then! who\'s this?"

Somebody seemed to be clattering up in clogs. A woman with the fish: three pairs of large soles and a score or two of herrings, which the captain had bought and paid for. Mrs. Copp, fearing what else might be coming, looked inclined to cry. The exasperated Sarah, more practical, took her hands out of the paste, wiped the flour off them on her check apron, and went darting across the heath without bonnet to the butcher\'s shop, the boy and his tray of rejected meat slowly following her. There she commenced a wordy war with the butcher, accusing him of being an idiot, with other disparaging epithets, and went marching home in triumph carrying two pounds of veal cutlet.

"And that\'s too much for us," she cried to her mistress, "with all that stock of fish and the pudding. What on earth is to be done with the fish, I don\'t know. If I fry a pair for dinner, and pickle the herrings, there\'ll be two pair left. They won\'t pickle. One had need to have poor folk coming here as they do at the Red Court. Master\'s gone off with purple streamers flying from his hat; I think he\'d more need to put on bells."

Scarcely had she got her hands into the flour again, when another person arrived. A girl with a goose. It was in its feathers, just killed.

"If you please, ma\'am," said she to Sarah, with a curtsey, "mother says she\'ll stick the other as soon as ever she can catch him; but he\'s runned away over the common. Mother sent me up with this for \'fraid you should be waiting to pluck him. The captain said they was to come up sharp."

Sarah could almost have found in her heart to "stick" her master. She was a faithful servant, and the waste of money vexed her. Mrs. Copp, quite unable to battle with the petty ills of life, left the strong-minded woman to fight against these, and ran away to her parlour.

The respected cause of all this, meanwhile, had reached Jutpoint, he and his streamers. There he had to wait a considerable time, but the train came in at last, and brought the travellers.

They occupied a first-class compartment in the middle of the train. There had been a little matter about the tickets at starting. Isaac Thornycroft procured them, and when they were seated, Anna took out her purse to repay him, and found she had not enough money in it. A little more that she possessed was in her box. Accustomed to travel second-class, even third, the cost of the ticket was more than she had thought for. Eighteenpence short!

"If you will please to take this, I will repay you the rest as soon as I can get to my box," she said, with painful embarrassment--an embarrassment that Isaac could not fail to notice and to wonder at Reared as she had been, money wore to her an undue value; to want it in a time of need seemed little short of a crime. She turned the silver about in her hands, blushing painfully. Miss Thornycroft discerned somewhat of the case.

"Never mind, Anna. I dare say you thought to travel second-class. You can repay my brother later."

Isaac\'s quick brain took in the whole. This poor friendless girl, kept at the Miss Jupps\' almost out of charity, had less money in a year for necessities than he would sometimes spend in an hour in frivolity. Anna held out the silver still, with the rose-coloured flush deepening on her delicate cheeks.

"What is it, Miss Chester?" he suddenly said. "Why do you offer me your money?"

"You took my ticket, did you not?"

"Certainly," he answered, showing the three little pieces of card in his waistcoat. "But I held the money for yours beforehand Put up your purse."

"Did you," she answered, in great relief, but embarrassed still. "Did Mrs. Copp give it you?--or--Miss Jupp?--or--or the captain?" Isaac laughed.

"You had better not inquire into secrets, Miss Chester. All I can tell you is, I had the money for your ticket in my pocket. Where is that important article--the wicker bottle? Captain Copp will expect it returned to him--empty."

"It is empty now; Miss Jupp poured out the rum-and-water," she answered, laughing. "I have it all safe."

She put up her purse as she spoke, inquiring no further as to the donor in her spirit of implicit obedience, but concluded it must have been Miss Jupp. And she never knew the truth until--until it was too late to repay Isaac.

At the terminus, side by side with the captain and his streamers, stood Justice Thornycroft. Anna remembered him well; the tall, fine, genial-natured man whom she had seen three years before in the day\'s visit to Mrs. Chester. All thought of her had long ago passed from his memory, but he recognised the face--the pale, patient, gentle face, which, even then, had struck Mr. Thornycroft as being the sweetest he had ever looked upon. It so struck him now.

"Where have I seen you?" he asked. And Anna told him.

The carriage, very much to the displeasure of Mary Anne, had not come over for her. Mr. Thornycroft explained that one of the horses he generally drove in it was found to be lame that morning. They got into the omnibus, the captain preferring to place himself with his ribbons and his wooden leg flat on the roof amidst the luggage. On the outskirts of Jutpoint, in obedience to his signal, the driver came to a standstill before the door of the "White Cliff" public-house, and the captain\'s head appeared at the back window, in a hanging position, inquiring whether brandy or rum would be preferred; adding, with a somewhat fierce look at Mr. Thornycroft and Isaac, that he should stand glasses round this time. Very much to the captain\'s discomfiture, the young ladies and the gentlemen declined both; so the only order the crestfallen captain could give the White Cliff was for two glasses of rum, cold without; that were disposed of by himself and the driver.

"Mind, Anna! I feel three-parts of a stranger in this place, and have really not a friend of my own age and condition in it, so you must supply the place of one to me during these holidays," said Miss Thornycroft, as the omnibus reached its destination--the Mermaid. "Part of every day I shall expect you to spend at the Red Court."

"I beg to second that," whispered Isaac, taking Anna\'s hand to help her out. And she blushed again that day for about the fiftieth time without knowing why or wherefore.

Not upon these summer holidays can we linger, because so much time must be spent on those of the next winter. On those of the next winter! If the inmates of the Red Court Farm could but have foreseen what those holidays were to bring forth for them! or Mary Anne Thornycroft dreamt of the consequences of indulging her own self-will! Just a few words more of the present, and then we go on.

Anna Chester\'s sojourn at Coastdown was passing swiftly, and she seemed as in a very Elysium. The days of toil, of servitude, of incessant care for others were over, temporarily at any rate, and she enjoyed comfort and rest. The hospitable, good-hearted sailor-captain, with his tales of the sea-serpent, the mermaid he had seen, and other marvels; the meek, gentle, ever-thoughtful Mrs. Copp, who caused Anna to address her as "aunt," and behaved more kindly to her than any aunt did yet; the most charming visits day by day to the Red Court Farm, and the constant society of Isaac Thornycroft. Ah, there it lay--the strange fascination that all things were beginning to possess around her--in the companionship of him. To say that Isaac Thornycroft, hitherto so mockingly heart-whole, had fallen in love with Anna the first evening he saw her at Miss Jupp\'s, would be going too far, but he was certainly three-parts in love before they reached Coastdown the following day. To watch her gentle face became like the sweetest music to Isaac Thornycroft. To see her ever-wakeful attentions to her entertainers, her gratitude for their kindness, her prompt help of Sarah when extra work was to be done, her loving care for the friendless and poor, was something new to Isaac, altogether out of his experience. Come weal, come woe, he resolved that this girl should be his wife. People, in their thoughtless gossip, had been wont to predict a high-born and wealthy bride for the attractive second son of Justice Thornycroft; this humble orphan, the poor daughter of the many years poor and humble curate, was the one he fixed upon, with all the world before him to choose from. How Fate changes plans! "L\'homme propose, mais Dieu dispose," was one of the most solemn truisms ever penned. Long ere the six weeks of holidays had passed, Isaac Thornycroft and Anna Chester had become all in all to each other: and he, a man accustomed to act upon impulse, spoke out.

It was during an evening walk to the Red Court Farm. Anna was going to tea there; Isaac met her on the heath--no unusual thing--and turned to walk by her side. Both were silent after the first greeting: true love is rarely eloquent. With her soft cheeks blushing, her pale eyelids drooping, her heart wildly beating, Anna sought--at first in vain--to find some topic of conversation, and chose but a lame one.

"Has Mary Anne finished her screen?"

Isaac smiled. "As if I knew!"

"She has the other one to do; and we shall be going back in a week."

"Not in a week!"

"The holidays will be up a week to-morrow."

A vista of the miserable time after her departure, when all things would be dark and dreary, wanting her who had come to make his heart\'s sunshine, cast its foreshadowing across the brain of Isaac. He turned to her in his impulse, speaking passionately.

"Anna, I cannot lose you. Rather than that, I must--I must--"

"Must what?" she asked, innocently.

"Keep you here on a visit to myself--a visit that can never terminate."<............