Lucy herself did not talk much to the old boatmen. Her happy relations with Mrs. May had not overcome all her shrinking from strangers, and she preferred to hear of them from Charlie, and to let him tell over their yarns to her. But when she went out with her husband they all gave her kindly greeting. It was Lucy’s delighted pride that whoever knew Charlie first seemed always ready to welcome and approve of her. She revelled in being regarded kindly for his sake. Yet it was as often something of her which had originally commended him. He or she who is wrapped round by a true and tender love carries its grace everywhere. After Charlie had had his pleasant chats to some of those old men, the one of them had said to the other— “Reckon that gentleman’s got a good woman belonging to him. Ye sort o’ feel it on him, like ye smell the spicy breezes before ye touch a port o’ the land where spices grow.” “Course he has,” said the other; “haven’t ye seen her? A winsome lass—one of the little craft that can go through a great deal of rough weather—the sort that’s generally made for that purpose, to my thinking.” Then came the last day before the returning day. “We will go for a long walk inland,” said Charlie. “It will be my last sight of English trees for a long while; and if autumn has carried off some of their beauty, it has added more of its own.” That afternoon Mrs. May announced that she was going for a walk up to Walmer Castle, and asked if the little master might go with her. Hugh was delighted—the sea was a perennial joy to him—to whom country lanes did not seem marvellously different from London squares and parks. Lucy gratefully assented. She never knew whether it was an accident, or whether the kind woman realised that she and Charlie would be thankful for a quiet ramble and an undisturbed conversation.