90 TO THE LIGHTHOUSEwould plant Rayley’s stick where they had sat andcome back at low tide again. There was nothingmore that could be done now. If the brooch wasthere it would still be there in the morning, theyassured her, but Minta still sobbed, all the way up tothe top of the cliff. It was her grandmother’s brooch;she would rather have lost anything but that, and yetNancy felt, though it might be true that she mindedlosing her brooch, she wasn’t crying only for that.She was crying for something else. We might all sitdown and cry, she felt. But she did not know what for.

They drew ahead together, Paul and Minta, andhe comforted her, and said how famous he was forfinding things. Once when he was a little boy hehad found a gold watch. He would get up at day-break, and he was positive he would find it. Itseemed to him that it would be almost dark, and hewould be alone on the beach, and somehow it wouldbe rather dangerous. He began telling her, how-ever, that he would certainly find it, and she saidthat she would not hear of his getting up at dawn: itwas lost: she knew that: she had had a presentimentwhen she put it on that afternoon. And secretly heresolved that he would not tell her, but he would slipout of the house at dawn when they were all asleepand if he could not find it he would go to Edinburghand buy her another, just like it but more beautiful.He would prove what he could do. And as theycame out on the hill and saw the lights of the townbeneath them, the lights coming out suddenly oneby one seemed like things that were going to happento him—his marriage, his children, his house; andagain he thought, as they came out on to the high

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