"But that was some time ago, my daughter tells me," replied Mr. Trupp. "And you've been wrong every time since."
Bess giggled; and the Colonel adjusted his field-glasses with delicate precision.
"If you say it's going to rain and keep on saying it long enough you'll probably prove right in the end," he remarked. "It's dogged as does it in the realm of speculation as elsewhere in my experience."
The old surgeon and his daughter turned their backs on the flagstaff and the solitary watchman beside it, and jogged towards the sunset red-strewn behind the white bluff of the Seven Sisters Newhaven-way.
Two figures topped the brow of Warren Hill in front and came swiftly over the short turf towards them. It was Saturday: Ruth and Ernie were on their way to their secret covert above Cow Gap as usual.
"About your last week-end up here before the weather breaks, I should say," chaffed the old surgeon as he passed them.
"Yes, sir. Just what I were a-sayin to Ruth," he answered. He had thought his secret known to none.
"Well, I hope the police won't catch you," remarked the other with a grin as he rode on.
"Never!--not unless someone was to give us away, sir!" said Ruth demurely, as she looked across the sea under lowered brows.
Bess called back reassuringly over her shoulder:
"You're all right, Ruth. I'll square Mr. Trupp."
The riders struck Duke's Drive and dropped down into Meads.
"How happy Ernie looks now!" said Bess. "It's delightful to see him."
"Yes," replied her father--"too happy. He's going to sleep again--just what I told you. And when he's well away in the land of dreams _IT_'ll pounce on him once more."
That evening over his coffee Mr. Trupp returned to the subject, which was a favourite with him.
"I always knew how it would be," he said with gloomy complacency.
"Of course," answered Mrs. Trupp, glancing mischievously at Bess.
"Makes him too comfortable," the wise man continued. "Fatal mistake. What he wants is an occasional flick with the whip to keep him up to the mark. We all do."
It was not, indeed, in Ruth's nature to use the whip or inspire the fear which few of us as yet are able to do without. And at present she did not bother much. For at first her beauty and spiritual power were quite enough to hold Ernie. He found in her the comfort and the stay the tree finds in the earth it is rooted in. She was the element in which he lived and moved and had his being. She satisfied his body and his spirit as the sea satisfies the fish which dwells in it. She steadied him and that was what he needed.