"You are going for a walk? I shall be glad to go too," answered Mrs. Mile promptly, putting a marker in her book, and rising. "No," responded Cicely; "I can't have those boots of yours pounding along beside me to-day, Priscilla Jane. Impossible." "Well, I do declare!" said Mrs. Mile, reduced in her surprise to the language of her youth. "They can't pound much, Mrs. Morrison, in the sand; and there's nothing but sand here." "They grind it down!" answered Cicely. "You can call grandpa, if you don't want me to go alone; but come with me to-day you shall not, you clean, broad-faced, turn-out-your-toes, do-your-duty old relict of Abner Whittredge Mile." She looked at Mrs. Mile consideringly as she said this, bringing out each word in a soft, clear tone. The judge was listlessly roving about the beach. Mrs. Mile gave him Cicely's request. "She is saying very odd things to-day, sir," she added, impersonally. The judge, alarmed, hurried to the lodge; Mrs. Mile could not keep up with him. "Priscilla Jane is short-winded, isn't she?" remarked Cicely, at the lodge door, as he joined her. "Whenever she comes uphill, she always stops, and pretends to admire the view, while she pants, 'What a beautiful scene! What a _privilege_ to see it!'" The judge grinned; he too had heard Mrs. Mile speak of "privileges." "Come for a walk, grandpa," Cicely went on. She took his arm and they went away together, followed by the careful eyes of the nurse, who had paused at the top of the ascent. "This is a ruse, grandpa," Cicely said, after a while. "I wanted to take a walk alone, and she wouldn't let me; but you will." "Why alone, my child?" "Because I'm always being watched; I'm just like a person in a cell, don't you know, with one of those little windows cut in the door, through which the sentinel outside can always look in; I am _never_ alone." "It must be dreadful," the judge answered, with conviction. "Wait till you have seen Priscilla Jane in her night-gown," said Cicely, with equal conclusiveness. "Heaven forbid!" said the judge, with a shrill little chuckle. Then he turned and looked at her; she seemed so much like her old self. "You will let me go, grandpa?" She put up her face and kissed him. "If you will promise to come back soon." "Of course I will." He let her go on alone. She looked back and smiled once or twice; then he lost sight of her; he returned to the beach by a roundabout way, in order to deceive Priscilla Jane; he was almost as much pleased as Cicely to outwit her.