Mr. Raymond, fortunately, was out; and Aunt Sarah, though a little surprised at so unusual a request from Jack, who was generally the most unsociable of boys, made no difficulties; so the two children went down the steep lane together, Jack a little sobered and trying not to feel disappointed, Molly trotting beside him, radiant with happiness.
In ten minutes he had forgotten all about his disappointment. More delightful even than the flashing water itself was Molly's joy in it. With amazement he discovered that this little creature, whom he had always looked down upon, possessed, at nine years old, a sense of beauty to which he, with all his superiority of a big boy, had only now awaked. She hugged herself with ecstasy at the sight of the green waves dashing up between wet rocks and flinging showers of bright spray into the sunlight. He took her to a favourite spot of his; a narrow rock platform on which one could kneel beside a hole in the granite, and look through into a cavern far below where the water foamed and thundered. As he knelt with his arm about her, holding her carefully so that she should not fall, he felt the little body quiver against his side, and drew her back from the edge of the hole.
"Don't be frightened! I won't let you fall."
Then he saw that it was not fear which made her tremble. Her eyes were big and shining as she looked up at him.
"Jack," she said, "do you think God lives down there?"
When the tide ebbed he took her down to the reef and showed her wonderful things. They fed anemones with scraps of dead limpets tied with strands of Molly's hair, which she tugged out in the recklessness of her excitement; and drew the bait up again, half-devoured, to see the anemone "turn sulky" and shrink into a shapeless lump of jelly. They undressed Daisy and bathed her solemnly, and dried her with grubby pocket-handkerchiefs, and plastered her broken nose with slimy sea-weed; oh, if the Gang had seen its captain playing with his sister's doll! They caught a shrimp, and mimicked his hideous face, and let him go again. At last they sat down side by side to eat their cherries, their naked feet in a rock pool.