Nothing at this time was more remarkable in Mr Stevenson than his extraordinary youthfulness of mind. At an age when other young men affect to be blasé and world weary he was delightfully and fearlessly boyish. Boyish even in his occasional half-comic solemnity of appearance; he was boyish likewise in his charming jests and jokes, and, above all, in his hearty delight in any outdoor 'ploy' that came in his way.
A comical instance of this nearness of the boy to the surface in him displayed itself one grey east-windy afternoon at Leven, when one saw quite another side to him than the literary and dilettante one displayed, with something of a mannered affectation, the day before in 'The Turret' drawing-room. He had walked down to the sands with his aunt and there were assembled various younger members of the Balfour clique, and some whom age and sex ought perhaps to have taught to despise, though it had not, the hoydenish pleasures of 'a sea-house.' A 'sea-house,' for the benefit of the uninitiated, is a deep hole dug in the sand while the tide is out, and the sand taken from the hole is built round in broad, high walls to make the fort resist as long as possible the rush of the incoming waves. It takes hours to make, but no trouble is too great, for is there not the fierce joy of adventure at the last when the waves finally win in the struggle and the huddled-together inmates of the now submerged house are thoroughly soaked with spray and salt water?
The 'sea-house,' the shouts of its builders, the tempting curl on the waves, as each one came a little further, the slight rise of the wind driving the breakers hurriedly landwards, were evidently too much for Mr Stevenson. One moment the weight of his nineteen years and the duty of politeness to his aunt restrained him, the next Mrs Balfour was left standing alone, and overcome with laughter, while Louis was in the sea house scolding, praising, and exhorting all at once, but above all imploring us to 'sit it out a little longer' as wave after wave widened the breach in the ramparts of sand, and
'In every hole the sea came up, Till it could come no more,'
while wetter and wetter grew the heroic few who, with Mr Stevenson 'sat it out' loyally, till it was possible to sit there no longer. Then wet--wetter indeed than ever before--the remnant crept home to be frowned upon and punished but to know no repentance; for had not Robert Louis been the ringleader, and was there any punishment invented that could take from the joy and the pride of a mischievous adventure in which _he_ had had a part! And he, with the water dripping from his trousers and 'squirching' in his boots, was perfectly and placidly happy, regardless of his aunt's dismay and the future horrors of a possible bad cold. He had been a schoolboy again for the all too brief half hour beside the grey and gurly sea, and that youthfulness, that survived through all the patient suffering of his life and that seems to laugh out of the pages of his books to the last, was in the ascendant as he walked off jauntily townwards, amiably oblivious of the lecture his aunt gave him by the way.