Stixon's boy, as every body called him (though he must have been close upon five-and-twenty, and carried a cane out of sight of the windows), being so considered, and treated boyishly by the maids of Castlewood, asserted his dignity, and rose above his value as much as he had lain below it, by showing that he owned a tender heart, and them that did not despise it.

For he chanced to be walking with his cane upon the beach (the very morning after he first went to Bruntsea, too late for any train back again), and casting glances of interior wonder over the unaccustomed sea--when from the sea itself out-leaped a wondrous rosy deity.
"You there, Mr.Stixon! Oh my! How long ?" exclaimed Mrs.Hockin's new parlormaid, ready to drop, though in full print now, on the landward steps of the bathing-machine set up by the reckless Major.
"Come this very hinstant, miss, honor bright!" replied the junior Stixon, who had moved in good society; "and just in the hackmy of time, miss, if I may offer you my 'umble hand." The fair nymph fixed him with a penetrating gaze through tresses full of salt curliness, while her cheeks were conscious of an unclad dip.

But William Stixon's eyes were firm with pure truth, gently toning into shy reproach and tenderness.

He had met her at supper last night, and done his best; but (as he said to the Castlewood maids) it was only feeling then, whereas now it was emoshun.
"Then you are a gentleman!" Polly Hopkins cried; "and indeed, Mr.
Stixon, these are slippery things." She was speaking of the steps, as she came down them, and they had no hand-rails; and the young man felt himself to be no more Stixon's boy, but a gentleman under sweet refining pressure.
From that hour forth it was pronounced, and they left the world to its own opinion, that they were keeping company; and although they were sixty miles apart by air, and eighty-two by railway, at every post their hearts were one, with considerable benefit to the United Kingdom's revenue.

Also they met by the sad sea waves, when the bathing-machines had been hauled up--for the Major now had three of them--as often as Stixon senior smiled--which he did whenever he was not put out--on the bygone ways of these children.