"I shall like to go, Shirley," again said Miss Helstone. "I long to hear the sound of waves--ocean-waves--and to see them as I have imagined them in dreams, like tossing banks of green light, strewed with vanishing and reappearing wreaths of foam, whiter than lilies. I shall delight to pass the shores of those lone rock-islets where the sea-birds live and breed unmolested. We shall be on the track of the old Scandinavians--of the Norsemen. We shall almost see the shores of Norway. This is a very vague delight that I feel, communicated by your proposal, but it _is_ a delight."
"Will you think of Fitful Head now when you lie awake at night, of gulls shrieking round it, and waves tumbling in upon it, rather than of the graves under the rectory back-kitchen?"
"I will try; and instead of musing about remnants of shrouds, and fragments of coffins, and human bones and mould, I will fancy seals lying in the sunshine on solitary shores, where neither fisherman nor hunter ever come; of rock crevices full of pearly eggs bedded in seaweed; of unscared birds covering white sands in happy flocks."
"And what will become of that inexpressible weight you said you had on your mind?"
"I will try to forget it in speculation on the sway of the whole great deep above a herd of whales rushing through the livid and liquid thunder down from the frozen zone--a hundred of them, perhaps, wallowing, flashing, rolling in the wake of a patriarch bull, huge enough to have been spawned before the Flood, such a creature as poor Smart had in his mind when he said,--

"I shall like to go, Shirley," said Miss Helstone. "I long to hear the ocean-waves, and to see them as I have imagined them in dreams, like tossing banks of green light, strewed with vanishing and reappearing wreaths of foam. I shall delight to see those lone rock-islets where the sea-birds live unmolested. We shall be on the track of the Vikings; we shall almost see the shores of Norway."
"Will you think of Fitful Head now when you lie awake at night, of gulls shrieking round it, and waves tumbling upon it, rather than of the graves under the rectory back-kitchen?"
"I will try; and instead of musing about shrouds and coffins, I will fancy seals lying in the sunshine on solitary shores; of happy flocks of unscared birds."
"And what will become of that weight you said you had on your mind?"
"I will try to forget it in imagining a herd of whales rushing through the deep, a hundred of them wallowing and rolling in the wake of a patriarch bull."
