Dorothea reposed with her shoulders in the shade of the bulkhead and her bare feet burrowing in the sun-warmed sand. Beneath her shoulder blades was a bulky and disheveled volume—a bound year of Godey’s Lady Book of the vintage of the early seventies. Having survived the handling of three generations, this seemed to take naturally to being drenched with rain and warped by sun, or, as at the present moment, serving its owner either as a sand-pillow or as a receptacle for divers scribbled verses on its fly-leaves and margins.
It was with a poem now that Dorothea was wrestling, as she wriggled her toes in the sand and gazed blankly oceanward. Under the scorching August sun, the Atlantic seemed to purr like a huge, amiable lion cub.
It was not the amiabilities of nature, however, in which Dorothea found inspiration. A harp of a single string, she sang as that minstrel might who was implored to make love alone his theme.