He was perhaps nine years old; if so, small for his
age. He had very thin legs in very short grey knickerbockers, a pale
freckled face, and hair that matched the sand. He was not remarkable.
But with a little good-will one can always find something impressive
in anybody. When Mr. Mallaby-Deeley won a wide and very sudden fame in
connexion with Covent Garden, an awe-stricken reporter wrote of him
for The Daily Mail, `he has the eyes of a dreamer.' I believe that Mr.
Cecil Rhodes really had. So, it seemed to me, had this little boy.
They were pale grey eyes, rather prominent, with an unwavering light
in them. I guessed that they were regarding the cottage rather as what
it should be than as what it had become. To me it appeared quite
perfect. But I surmised that to him, artist that he was, it seemed a
poor thing beside his first flushed conception.
He knelt down and, partly with the flat of his spade, partly with the
palm of one hand, redressed some (to me obscure) fault in one of the
gables. He rose, stood back, his eyes slowly endorsed the amendment. A
few moments later, very suddenly, he scudded away to the adjacent
breakwater and gave himself to the task of scraping off it some of the
short green sea-weed wherewith he had made the cottage's two gardens
so pleasantly realistic, oases so refreshing in the sandy desert.
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