TO THE LIGHTHOUSEthat’. The tide was coming in fast. The sea wouldcover the place where they had sat in a minute. Therewas not a ghost of a chance of their finding it now.‘We shall be cut off!’ Minta shrieked, suddenly ter-rified. As if there were any danger of that! It wasthe same as the bulls all over again—she had nocontrol over her emotions, Andrew thought. Womenhadn’t. The wretched Paul had to pacify her. Themen (Andrew and Paul at once became manly, anddifferent from usual) took counsel briefly and decidedthat they would plant Rayley’s stick where they hadsat and come back at low tide again. There was no-thing more that could be done now. If the broochwas there, 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, andyet Nancy felt, though it might be true that she mindedlosing her brooch, she wasn’t crying only for that. Shewas crying for something else. We might all sit downand cry, she felt. But she did not know what for.

They drew ahead together, Paul and Minta, and hecomforted her, and said how famous he was for find-ing things. Once when he was a little boy he hadfound a gold watch. He would get up at daybreakand he was positive he would find it. It seemed to himthat it would be almost dark, and he would be aloneon the beach, and somehow it would be rather dan-gerous. He began telling her, however, that he wouldcertainly find it, and she said that she would nothear of his getting up at dawn: it was lost: she knewthat: she had had a presentiment when she put it onthat afternoon. And secretly he resolved that he would92
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