It was a sultry afternoon, and Florimel lay on the seaward side
of the dune, buried in her book. The sky was foggy with heat, and
the sea lay dull, as if oppressed by the superincumbent air, and
leaden in hue, as if its colour had been destroyed by the sun. The
tide was rising slowly, with a muffled and sleepy murmur on the
sand; for here were no pebbles to impart a hiss to the wave as it
rushed up the bank, or to go softly hurtling down the slope with
it as it sank. As she read, Malcolm was walking towards her along
the top of the dune, but not until he came almost above where she
lay, did she hear his step in the soft quenching sand.
She nodded kindly, and he descended approaching her.
"Did ye want me, my leddy?" he asked.
"No," she answered.
"I wasna sure whether ye noddit 'cause ye wantit me or no," said
Malcolm, and turned to reascend the dune.
"Where are you going now?" she asked.
"Ow! nae gait in particlar. I jist cam oot to see hoo things war
luikin."
"What things?"
"Ow! jist the lift (sky), an' the sea, an' sic generals."
That Malcolm's delight in the presences of Nature--I say presences,
as distinguished from forms and colours and all analyzed sources
of her influences--should have already become a conscious thing
to himself requires to account for it the fact that his master,
Graham, was already under the influences of Wordsworth, whom he had
hailed as a Crabbe that had burst his shell and spread the wings
of an eagle the virtue passed from him to his pupil.
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