She had darted out of the cottage, hatless, as usual, her nose already peeling with sunburn and her long bare legs covered with midge-bites and sea-holly scratches down to her white sand-shoes, to waylay our postman; he’s the son of Mrs. Roberts, our landlady, a young Welsh giant who wears that uniform coat for just that five minutes daily which it takes him to deliver the mails at Porth Cariad. “Yes, mam!” he announced. “Picture poss-card for you—I wonder shall I have it, mam, when you read it? Blodwen and me is making a co-leckshon of those. Letter for your mother; letter an’ _big_ parsal for the strange young lady.” I—who have not been seen in the place before this year—am the strange young lady. “Here you are,” said Theo, bringing the mail into the kitchen-sitting-room where we’d just finished breakfast; a room that boasts three grandfather clocks and five pairs of china dogs and a dresser crowded with blue-and-white plates. “The letter and the ‘parsal’ for Nancy are both from the Adored One!” Meaning her brother. “And I suppose you’ll now have to fly off somewhere to read your love-letter all by yourself.” “Of course I must,” I laughed. For it’s rather amusing in the face of all this to think that, except for one sentimental scrap from Sydney, I’ve never had a love-letter to read in all my life! * * * * * This duty-document of my official _fiancé’s_ I’ve taken out on to the sand-hills; there’s a dip under the crest of one of them where I can curl up in comfort out of the wind, facing the view across the bay, with that pale lilac silhouette of the Carnarvonshire hills across the water. How funny it seems to unfold a letter bearing the familiar heading of the Near Oriental Shipping Company’s offices! But this one, actually, is not type-written, and signed by a “William Waters, per pro.,” and a scrawled “A. A.” of Mr. Alexander’s. William Waters has written in his own hand; not a particularly good one, either. Several sheets of it? Was it such an unusually slack day at the office, then? “July —, 1913. “MY DEAR NANCY, “I was glad to hear _from my mother_” (I don’t see why he should underline the three last words; _I_ shouldn’t be likely to write first.) “that you’d arrived safely and were comfortably settled into the cottages. I wonder what you think of Porth Cariad. I do hope you won’t be bored to extinction in such a quiet spot; but you were warned, weren’t you, not to expect esplanades and pier-concerts and shops and things? Do you think you can manage to make yourself at all happy without them? “How do you like the bathing in that little bay next to the cottages? Can you swim? If not, you will have to learn. I will teach you.