Do you suppose they will let us go on board of them?"
"Why, of course they will." Then to the porter, "Give me a sheet
of paper and an envelope, please.--I must let Ned know that I am
here at once."
Mrs. Ashe wrote her note and despatched it before they went upstairs to
take off their bonnets. She seemed to have a half-hope that some bird of
the air might carry the news of her arrival to her brother, for she kept
running to the window as if in expectation of seeing him. She was too
restless to lie down or sleep, and after she and Katy had lunched,
proposed that they should go out on the beach for a while.
"Perhaps we may come across Ned," she remarked.
They did not come across Ned, but there was no lack of other
delightful objects to engage their attention. The sands were smooth
and hard as a floor. Soft pink lights were beginning to tinge the
western sky. To the north shone the peaks of the maritime Alps, and
the same rosy glow caught them here and there, and warmed their grays
and whites into color.
"I wonder what that can be?" said Katy, indicating the rocky point which
bounded the beach to the east, where stood a picturesque building of
stone, with massive towers and steep pitches of roof. "It looks half
like a house and half like a castle, but it is quite fascinating, I
think. Do you suppose that people live there?"
"We might ask," suggested Mrs. Ashe.
Just then they came to a shallow river spanned by a bridge, beside whose
pebbly bed stood a number of women who seemed to be washing clothes by
the simple and primitive process of laying them in the water on top of
the stones, and pounding them with a flat wooden paddle till they were
white.
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