Whitecliffe Sands, anxious to present to its visitors every attraction and convenience that may place it among rising seaside resorts, numbers among the latter a Tourist Bureau in the High Street where, so an inscription informs you, you may book in advance to any railway station in the British Isles. On the morning of the arrival of the registered letter, Mr. Wriford stepped in here and took for to-morrow two first-class tickets to London: a fast train at five o'clock in the afternoon, he was told. III The morrow brought Mr. Bickers at midday, Mrs. Bickers and Mr. Wriford and Essie at the station to meet him, Essie in his arms and hugging him with delighted cries of joy before he is well out of the train. It is a thing to make all who stand about on the platform desist from their own greetings to see her slim young figure in its pretty white dress flash forward as the train comes in, and to smile at her cry of "There he is! Oh, jus' look at his summer waistcoat he's got!" and then to see her in his arms with "Oh, Dad! Oh, if you don't look a darling in that waistcoat! Whereever did you get it, though?" Most wonderfully animated she is, most radiantly pretty. Mr. Bickers, after affectionate greeting of his wife, and to Mr. Wriford most genial "Hullo, Arthur! All right? That's the way! Glad to see you again, Arthur," watches her adoringly where she has returned to his carriage with "I'll get your bag, Dad!" and says: "Doesn't she look a picture, our Essie! Doesn't Whitecliffe suit our Essie!" Most wonderfully animated she is, most radiantly pretty--chattering; walking with gay little skips as she holds Dad's hand while they proceed to the lodgings; carrying them all with her a dozen times on her irresistible appeal of: "Oh, isn't that funny, though! Let's have a laugh," before the lodgings are reached. It is much more than Whitecliffe's breezes that make her thus, much more than joy at Dad's arrival: it is that this is To-day, the promised day--the secret come to bursting-point, and to burst out in all its wonder at any moment that Mr. Wriford may choose to relieve the almost unbearable excitement and mystery and tell her it may be told. "Feels to me like all the birthdays I ever had all rolled into one," Essie had declared to Mr. Wriford early that morning. "If you'd seen me jump out of bed when I woke up! Oh, jus' think when we tell them! Will it be when Dad arrives at the station? Well, at lunch, then?" And when Mr. Wriford smiles and shakes his head at each of these, "Well, but they think you're going to-day! Oh, if ever I knew any one love a mystery like you do!" "I'll tell you when," says Mr. Wriford. "I'll tell you all of a sudden." For him also it is the day--the promised day--awaited thus with deliberate purpose, and he a little nervous, a little restless, something ill at ease now that its hour swiftly comes.