There was no autumnal mist on the
coast, nor any August fog; instead of these, the sea, the sky, all
the long shore line and the inland hills, with every bush of bay
and every fir-top, gained a deeper color and a sharper clearness.
There was something shining in the air, and a kind of lustre on the
water and the pasture grass,--a northern look that, except at this
moment of the year, one must go far to seek. The sunshine of a
northern summer was coming to its lovely end.
The days were few then at Dunnet Landing, and I let each of
them slip away unwillingly as a miser spends his coins. I wished
to have one of my first weeks back again, with those long hours
when nothing happened except the growth of herbs and the course of
the sun. Once I had not even known where to go for a walk; now
there were many delightful things to be done and done again, as if
I were in London. I felt hurried and full of pleasant engagements,
and the days flew by like a handful of flowers flung to the sea
wind.
At last I had to say good-by to all my Dunnet Landing friends,
and my homelike place in the little house, and return to the world
in which I feared to find myself a foreigner.
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