However, when he neared the small park which surrounded the Attertons’ house, he dismissed the idea as ridiculous.
He was quite sure no one at all had ever loved any girl in just the wonderful and particular way that he loved Elizabeth. He had invented it, and it would die with him.
And, of course, if he had not felt like that, he would not have been a real lover.
During the last quarter of an hour before he rang the bell he was preparing phrases to use in presenting the flowers.
“I just saw some fine blooms as I came away, and I thought you might like them, Miss Elizabeth. I remember your saying you were fond of roses.”
No. That was too casual.
“I saw these roses in the garden and they reminded me of you. So I brought them to you.”
No. That was too pointed.
But he wanted to be pointed.
Then he saw a motor before the door and a cart going round to the stables and was thus made aware of a possibility that he had quite left out of his calculations. There were other visitors in the house.
His throat grew quite dry with nervousness and annoyance and disappointment, and he thought he would hide the roses in a bush; but a certain doggedness made him cling to them, and as he stood undecided the Stamfords passed him in their motor and he had to go on or look like a fool.
So he went on, and was ushered into a room half full of people, where Elizabeth sat laughing in a distant window-seat with Dick Stamford and her brother Bill, and he had to account for the roses in his hand.
“How-do-you-do, Mrs. Atterton?” he heard himself saying in a voice that sounded queerly unfamiliar.
“And you’ve brought me those roses? How sweet of you,” said Mrs. Atterton in her good-natured way, thinking he was shy and wanted helping out. “I love roses!” She glanced round with the eye of the born hostess. “Will you take Miss Banks in to tea? Mr. Deane of Gaythorpe – Miss Banks, the daughter of Mr. Banks, the Rector of Millsby.”
“Oh, Mr. Deane and I are quite old friends,” said Miss Banks with animation.
“Delighted,” said Andy.
And half an hour later he came back to the room to find his roses wilting on a side-table and Elizabeth absent.
“I hope your daughters are quite well?” he remarked wistfully to Mr. Atterton, whom he encountered on the lawn.
“Oh yes. Norah’s away and Elizabeth is playing tennis in the lower court, I expect,” said Mr. Atterton carelessly, as if he were speaking of any ordinary girl.
“Miss Elizabeth plays very well, doesn’t she?” said Andy.
“No … rotten service,” said Mr. Atterton, and Andy felt he did not deserve to have such a daughter.
“I suppose the lower court is over there?” suggested Andy.
“Yes. I say, would you like to come and see my pigs?”
Now pigs were, next to red villas, the main interest of Mr. Atterton’s existence, and an invitation to visit them in his company was a great honour. What was a possible prospective son-in-law to do?
“Thank you very much,” said Andy, following his host, and endeavouring to take an intelligent interest in queer-looking and precious animals that rather resembled a wild boar than the domestic porker. He must have succeeded, for on leaving to be in time for evensong, he received an immense compliment.
“You’re like me,” said Mr. Atterton. “Pigs more in your line than girls and tea-drinking, hey?”
CHAPTER X
The year was just at that most pleasant pause between hay-time and harvest, and the Vicarage brooded in the sun amongst the full-leaved trees like an architectural embodiment of repose. Quiet joys seemed to cluster round its broad windows like the roses, and a very faint ‘Coo-coo!’ from the pigeons in Mr. Thorpe’s yard sounded like a lullaby heard only by the soul – something too deeply peaceful to be real.
And in spite of all that, there were three broken hearts, or cracked hearts – anyway, hearts not in a comfortable condition – under that very roof.
For Elizabeth had receded, mentally and physically, to a remote distance. She first departed to some inaccessible region in a sort of glory of white draperies and careless smiles when Andy caught sight of her in the window-seat across the blank distance of her mother’s drawing-room. It seemed then incredibly audacious that he could ever have dreamed what he had dreamed.
In addition to which she had actually gone to stay with an aunt for a week, a fact of which Andy was unaware; and he haunted the lanes where he had sometimes met her in the past with so sad a countenance, that such of his parishioners as met him reported it was true – he had ruined his stomach with over-eating – no young feller with a good house and a decent income would go about like that if he could digest his food. There was no doubt a very good reason for his abstaining from butter, as Mrs. Jebb told Miss Kirke he continued to do.
Then Mrs. Jebb herself. She also suffered – not from blighted affection exactly, but from a blight upon certain vague hopes which were ready to ripen into affection. It was, she had felt on coming to the Vicarage, notorious that young men did, in the present age, often marry women old enough to be their maiden aunts; and though Mr. Jebb still loomed monumental in her heart, she had a large heart, and there was plenty of room for another occupant. So she went about her work with a certain romantic melancholy that was not unpleasant, and her sighs were like the wind rushing sadly through those empty spaces which Andy declined to fill. She was short with the little maid, however, during those days, to a degree that would have caused Sophy to rebel if she had not been so full of her own concerns, and inclined to disregard a universe on account of a blue silk tie presented to another young lady.
So, by the day previous to the school-treat, there was a charged atmosphere at Gaythorpe Vicarage, which only required a match to make it explode; and the match was provided by Mrs. Jebb in the shape of a gingerbread pudding, which she had absently sweetened with carbonate of soda, instead of sugar.
Andy rang the bell.
“Take this stuff away,” he said. “It is not fit for human food. Tell Mrs. Jebb I wish to speak to her.”
But in the five minutes which elapsed before she appeared, Andy’s wrath began to cool, and, unfortunately, his courage cooled with it, so that the dignified and stern rebuke which had been waiting for her at the moment of tasting the pudding petered out on her arrival into a rather feeble —
“I say, Mrs. Jebb, this won’t do, you know. You really must cook better than this.”
“When I entered your service,” said Mrs. Jebb, whom Sophy had not spared in her recital of the message, “I expected to be treated very differently from what I have been in many ways. I never expected to be sent for by cheeky maid-servants, in a manner” – she paused, gulped, and concluded – “that no gentleman should send for a lady in.”
“It’s not only the pudding,” said Andy, nettled afresh by this want of a proper attitude, “it’s your cooking altogether. You must see that.”
But Mrs. Jebb’s interview with the triumphant Sophy had left her in a state of mind that allowed her to see nothing but a mist, through which Andy’s boyish, reproving face loomed as a last irritation. She wanted to box his ears, but replied instead —
“If you are not satisfied, I will go. Pray accept my notice from this day forth.”
Feeling vaguely that she had given notice in a dignified, Biblical manner suited to her position as housekeeper at a vicarage, she walked from the room.
But when she reached the door the air blew in from the garden, and a little shower of rose-leaves fluttered down through the sunshine. She stopped short with a sudden stunned contraction of the heart.
What was she doing? What on earth was she doing? Had she been mad?
She passed a handkerchief over her forehead and came back slowly into the room.
“I apologise,” she said breathlessly. “My temper got the better of me. Pray think no more about it.”
Andy turned round from the window.
“I think we will not discuss the matter further,” he said. “Please consider your resignation accepted.”
He was pleased now at the thought of getting rid of her – though if she had not given notice, he would have kept her for an indefinite period, with a man’s usual dislike for any change in his domestic arrangements.
“Very well,” replied Mrs. Jebb, gathering some remnants of dignity round her, “it must, of course, be as you wish.”
She attempted to flutter with her usual light air towards the door, but just before she reached it she stopped short and began to cry.
“Come, Mrs. Jebb,” said Andy, unable to leave well alone, “you gave me notice, you know. And you’ll find heaps of other places.”
“Where?” said Mrs. Jebb, turning on him with a sort of desperate sincerity that made all her foolish little affectations fall from her like a mantle, leaving the real woman – old, defenceless, incapable – so nakedly plain for Andy to see that he felt almost ashamed.
“Lady-cooks,” he murmured – “there’s a constant demand for lady-cooks.”
“I’m not very strong,” sobbed Mrs. Jebb. “I couldn’t take an ordinary place. No – I shall have to go back to my brother – and his wife – ”
“Well, that will be pleasanter for you – with relations,” suggested Andy cheerfully.
Then the bitterness of the unwanted – which is no less terrible because they do not deserve to be wanted – gripped Mrs. Jebb’s soul and made her jerk out in breathless sentences —
“Pleasant! To sit down to meals all the rest of your life where you have to say you don’t like anything tasty because there’s never enough for three!”
Well, it was no reason for retaining an incompetent housekeeper, but there is something so helplessly touching about every real self, when the outside self which hides it fades away, that no wonder Andy said, after a pause —
“All right, Mrs. Jebb. Have another go and see how you manage.”
For a moment longer Mrs. Jebb’s real self remained visible while she leaned her head on the door-post and mopped her eyes in speechless relief and thankfulness; then it disappeared, and she patted her fringe with a fluttered —
“How foolish of me! But I have become so attached to Gaythorpe. I am so delighted that our little misunderstanding has been cleared up. I am so glad you spoke candidly, Mr. Deane. I hope you always will in future if there is any little matter you don’t like.”
And she tripped into the hall with something of her old airiness.
An hour later Andy was bending over the plantains on the lawn in the front part of the garden, facing the road, and two women passed by on the other side of the hedge without seeing him.
“Nice house, I allus think.”
“Yes. Rare thing being Parson Andy.” Then they passed on, and their Vicar saw through a hole in the hedge that it was the meek and respectful Mrs. Burt who had spoken.
He ground his teeth. Parson Andy, indeed! Then the undignified abbreviation was going to dog him to his dying day.
It was the last straw – he flung down his spud and stalked into the house.
Nothing in life is more interesting and queer than the way in which every trifling event fits into and influences the rest.
For instance – Andy fell in love.
That made him feel a new chivalry and kindness towards all girls, particularly towards those who lived in his own parish. It may have been ridiculous, or it may not, but he became secretly proud of their fresh looks and jealous of their honour, like an elder brother. Several of them sang in the choir-gallery whose families attended chapel, and, one way or another, he knew nearly every one in the parish by now, as a country parson will in old-fashioned places. So when one of those regrettable incidents occurred which happen in all country parishes, he was inclined to forget his casual knowledge of such affairs in London, and to look on the thing as a personal outrage.
It was no longer a vague girl who had taken a wrong turning, but a definite Gladys Wilton, whose life was spoilt, and a John Wilton, shepherd, who went sorrowful and shamed.
Falling in love with Elizabeth, therefore, had made girls sacred to her lover, and that is rather a fine thing to say of Elizabeth.
The other events at work in Andy when he encountered the author of the misfortune in a lonely lane were, the difference with Mrs. Jebb, the “Parson Andy” of the two women passing the hedge, and, in the immediate present, a meeting with a big young man instead of the eagerly expected Elizabeth, who was still away from home, though Andy did not know it.
He had walked miles, scanning the fields and lanes round her house in vain, but not venturing to call. So he was feeling tired, and irritable, and more in love than ever. And the events mentioned pushed him on into a course of action which he would otherwise not have taken.
The young man, too, was looking very jolly, with a pipe in his mouth and a good bicycle and every evidence of self-satisfied prosperity.
“Afternoon!” he said rather insolently, with a smirk that irritated Andy still further. He had been asked by old Wilton to speak to the young man, and he suddenly made up his mind that he would speak now.
“Stop!” he cried. “May I have a word with you?”
So they entered into a conversation which began all right, but ended, as it was bound to do under the circumstances, by Andy calling the young man a coward, and the young man calling Andy a blanked, interfering parson, who only dared to say things like that because he knew he wouldn’t have to fight.
“I don’t mind a fight,” said Andy, beginning to go white about the nose and to breathe heavily.
No one, of course, could maintain for one moment that Andy was the right sort of parson.
“All very well to talk,” sneered the young man, sticking a crimson face close to Andy’s. “Do, then I’ll believe you! Parsons” – (he used adjectives) – “we’ll soon have done with parsons in this country” (and he used adjectives again).
“I’ll fight you,” said Andy slowly, “if you’ll promise to marry her if I win.”
“If you win, I will,” panted the young man. “I can safely promise that. But you daren’t. You’ll get me to start and have me up for assault. I know you.”
He thrust his face so near that his rough moustache tickled Andy’s nose and that was enough.
Andy began to take off his coat.
Then, for a few moments, ensued an unseemly and unchristian scene which no friend of the Vicar of Gaythorpe would wish to dwell on.
According to all the laws of fiction Andy ought to have come off victorious, but, as a matter of fact, he was badly beaten, and it was only by a fluke that he managed to give his opponent a black eye in return for his own damaged wrist.
The big young man silently watched him struggling to put on his coat, then, with a hand over the injured eye, assisted him into it.
“Do you know I’m the best boxer for ten miles round?” he asked grimly.
“I – I believe I’d heard so,” replied Andy, still very confused and hardly knowing what he said.
“And you made no more of going for me than as if I’d been a counter-jumper?” continued the young man.
“I forgot,” said Andy. “However – ” and he began to trudge on, very much ashamed of himself.
“Look here,” said the young man. “I’ll tell you a thing I didn’t mean to. There wasn’t no need for you to fight me about Gladys. I promised the old man last night I would marry her. But I wasn’t going to tell you that when you started jawing me.”
“I see,” said Andy. “Well, I’m glad,” and he started to plod on again, very shaky about the knees.
“Look here,” said the young man, following him, “you’re not fit to walk home. I gave you a doing, I did. Here’s my bike.”
Andy looked at him and he looked at Andy, and the virile souls of both met in that look and, in a sense, shook hands.
“Thanks,” said Andy, mounting the bicycle.
“I say,” the young man shouted after him, “we were going to be married at the registry in Bardswell, but you can marry us if you like.”
“All right,” Andy called back over his shoulder.
CHAPTER XI
When you live in a large community you feel it possible to give an enemy a private black eye and that there the matter ends – nobody’s business but yours and his – and it is only when you live in a little place that you realise the extraordinary fact that there are no private black eyes – every black eye affects the universe.
Of course every one knows this, but only through the microscope of narrow lives do you see the principle at work.
Which all means that Andy would not have met Elizabeth at Marshaven if the young man who was her aunt’s carpenter had not been obliged to abstain from attending upon particular widows; for Elizabeth would have been unable to find any excuse which would possibly hold water for coming into the little town on the day of the school-treat. And her own self-respect – the self-respect of a girl in such matters is a queer and chancy thing – would not permit her to come in without a decent excuse.
However, a carpenter happened to be rather urgently needed, and, as the young man’s father was laid up with bronchitis, and the young man himself had a black eye, Elizabeth volunteered to walk over to Marshaven, a distance of about two miles from her aunt’s house, which lay between Millsby and the sea.
“Take the pony-cart,” entreated the aunt.
But Elizabeth’s face assumed the expression which her family knew well, and she walked.
Meantime, Gaythorpe had awakened early to the sense of an outing, which is a vastly different thing from just going out – as different as moonshine from electric light.
For an outing has glamour and wonder in it, and that precious atmosphere does still hang about certain feasts and seasons in lonely places, not because bicycles have not penetrated everywhere, but because the Spirits of Ancient Revelry come out from their hiding-places in barns and on deserted greens, and whisper jolly tales of days when men still had an appetite for fun – silly, childish, inferior fun that meant nothing and led nowhere.
And the very same spirit that had fled with a shriek of the violin from the Attertons’ window, properly banished after making a whole roomful of people forget that they were earnest citizens with only one purpose in life – to do well for themselves and have a good time that should cost money and look it – that very same spirit had the cheek to venture forth again and tap at all the windows in Gaythorpe village in the freshness of the early morning.
Most of the young people were used to bicycling over to Marshaven on a Sunday afternoon, and thought nothing at all of the few hours at the sea which had been regarded as such a treat when the School-Feast was first started, but even they scanned the dewy, blue distance of the pasture-lands with a feeling of joyous anticipation. And in most of the farmhouses there was a pleasant bustle of cutting ham-sandwiches, and packing them in cabbage leaves to keep moist and cool for the midday meal on the sands, and packing cheesecakes in cardboard boxes for fear the light pastry should break, and scalding cream, and corking it down in bottles, because the milk provided at the Marshaven refreshment-rooms was no sort of use to a woman who was dog-tired with walking about all day, and wanted a good cup of tea to hearten her against the return journey.
For a real outing is no brief run down to eat and back again – it is a day stretching out full of long, sunny hours, with sandwiches on the shore at half-past twelve, and tea, provided by the ladies of the parish, in a bare, high room at five.
So by nine o’clock the three waggon-loads were already rumbling down the village street. High above the horses’ heads tossed the little arches of paper roses and trembling grass, and the tiny round bells jangled with every step, to make a tune that the Spirit of Ancient Revelry knew well, but which is as strange to us as a forgotten harvest-song.
The men and girls of the choir were there with the school-children and school-teachers, but such ladies as married Thorpes and Werrits would follow later, aristocratic in gigs and dog-carts.
Andy was in the last waggon, which had a wreath of pink paper roses and green laurel all round the body, with a bunch in the centre of each wheel, and pink arches above the horses’ heads. It was a common enough sight about Marshaven between hay-time and harvest, but not to Andy; and the sight of the fine horses and the waggons in front, one trimmed with white, one with yellow, and the sunlight shining so fresh and gay upon the dewy hedgerows on either side, made him feel as if he wanted to throw up his hat and sing, in spite of his injured wrist and his other afflictions.
“It always is fine for the School-Feast,” said Rose Werrit, who was a Sunday-school teacher, and who sat on a bench in a glow of youth and importance, with an arm round a fat boy of five.
Andy – it is a disgraceful thing to have to acknowledge – but Andy felt inclined to bend over and kiss Rose’s pretty flushed cheek, and yet he was tremendously in love with Elizabeth – perhaps because he was so tremendously in love with Elizabeth; but he caught back the wandering impulse and felt ashamed of his own wickedness. How could he —
But from that instant he began to feel less harshly toward certain sinners whom he had before condemned without a hearing. A little of the tolerant humanity of Brother Gulielmus, who had loved his flock so well, because he understood them, began to mellow Andy’s crude judgment.
However, he turned his present attention to Miss Fanny Kirke, who was forty-nine; and they discoursed pleasantly of the weather and the approaching holidays, and finally of Mr. Willie Kirke, who was playing popular airs on a concertina in the first waggon to lighten the way.
“He really seems able to do anything,” said Andy, with sincere admiration.
“Always could,” said Miss Kirke. “Tiresome about his meals, even as a child, wouldn’t touch suet pudding or animal’s frys of any kind; but made a windmill out of a card, a pin, and a stick of firewood when he was five. I heard Mrs. Stamford once call him quite the Admirable Bright’un, and indeed he is.”
Andy began to chuckle, then he turned it into a cough. Miss Kirke had not intended a pun at all, and she added in a very low tone, glancing at Mrs. Jebb’s gauze veil that floated like a banner from the next waggon —
“He is just the sort of man to be taken in by a designing woman.”
“Oh, I’m sure – ” remonstrated Andy.
“Don’t tell me!” interrupted Miss Kirke, her refinement for once upset by what was the obsessing fear of her existence.
“I can’t think it possible,” said Andy, unable to pretend, in face of that eye fixed on the floating veil, that he did not understand the drift of her remarks.
“Anything’s possible,” said Miss Fanny Kirke with some bitterness, “when you get a widow and a man together.”
Then the waggons rumbled round that turning where there first begins to be a cool saltiness in the air, and little Jimmy Simpson called out, jumping up on a seat —
“I smell the sea! I smell the sea!”
“Sit down, you naughty boy. You’ll tummel into the road,” said Sally, anxiously pulling at a sturdy leg.
He gave a kick and roared out —
“Want to tummel into the road!”
“Now, now,” said Mrs. Simpson. “Jimmy must be good, or else mother’ll take him home again.”
Jimmy eyed the long distance behind him for a moment, then he replied —
“You touldn’t!”
But a lurch of the waggon pitched him into the midst of a little nest of crowded baby figures, and he condescended to sit down again.
Sally looked across at Andy, because she and her Vicar had become friends, and she said with resignation —
“He’ll get drownded in the sea if I don’t have him tied to me. Can you lend me a bit of string?”
“He’ll drown you too,” remonstrated Andy, but he handed out the required string. It was impossible to treat Sally as though she were a very little girl.
“Oh, no,” she replied. “I should call out. And I’ve a very loud skreek, haven’t I, mother?”
“You make out Jimmy’s such a bad boy. I’m sure he isn’t, the lamb,” said his mother, burying her cheek in his curls.
But the lamb was disinclined for demonstrative affection at that moment, and he fought her off.
“You don’t want boys to sit still,” said Mrs. Simpson, glancing round proudly.
“N-no,” said Andy, as no one else replied. “He’s a splendid little chap!”
And indeed, as he struggled up again to stand unsteadily in the sunshine above the other children, with the full light on his bright hair and merry face, he did seem the very embodiment of joy and hope and roguish bravery – the things that belong to the clean dawn of life.
“I hope he’ll do well. I hope he’ll grow into a splendid man,” said Andy suddenly.
Or rather the words said themselves as he watched the little laughing lad with his curls all gold against the summer sky. Thus was the father born in Andy.
“It’ll be getting on or the gallows with him, bless him,” said Mrs. Simpson placidly.
Then the sea came in sight between a dip of the sand-hills, and after a little more creaking and jolting the waggons stopped outside the long refreshment-rooms known all over the countryside as ‘Walkers’,’ and every one went down to the sands.
Andy walked in the midst of a group of choirmen and lads to the coco-nut shy, where it was agreeable to the feelings of the Gaythorpe youth that their Vicar knocked off no less than five coconuts; they would have been ashamed of him if he had missed. But after a while they dispersed in different directions, and Andy walked sedately along the shore with Mr. Kirke, discussing the news of the day.
Little groups encountered and chatted with them, and considered them important, and they considered themselves more important still, and everything was as it should be.
But it is just in those placid moments that you want to look out – for something nearly always lurks round the next corner. In this case it was Elizabeth. Not that she was lurking in any actual sense, that being a thing she would disdain to do, but she came along round a bend in the sand-hills with the free wind blowing her blue gown about her and the sunshine on her face.
“Bless me – Miss Elizabeth Atterton!” said Mr. Kirke.
“Is it?” said the Vicar. “Dear me, yes, I see it is.”
Oh, Andy – when the world went golden like the sands beneath her feet at the very sight of her!
“Mr. Deane! How very strange,” said Miss Atterton with great aplomb, but with a colour in her cheeks that had not been there when she walked the shore alone.
“Ha-ha! Yes. Just happened to be down with the School-Feast,” said Andy, laughing at nothing at all.
“Oh – the School-Feast – of course,” said Elizabeth, as if it had that moment entered her head. “And how are you getting on, Mr. Kirke? Is Miss Kirke here?”
“Yes, Miss Elizabeth. I – er – promised to join her. I must hasten back now, I am sorry to say.”
So did Mr. Willie Kirke prove himself to be a man and a brother as he skimmed back with a light step by the damp edge of the waves, and Andy remarked with heartfelt sincerity —
“Awfully good chap – the heart of a true gentleman.”
“And so marvellously versatile,” added Elizabeth.
Then they strolled slowly along until they encountered Sally, who had strayed from a group of children round a shallow pool and was searching the shore with her usual earnestness of purpose.
“I’m not looking for shells – I’m looking for money,” said Sally in a serious voice; and she disengaged herself from Elizabeth’s detaining hand to plod on again in a business-like manner.
“There’s no money on the sands, goosey,” said Elizabeth, kneeling down to bring her own bright head in a line with the little anxious face.
Sally looked at Elizabeth with that questioning gaze by which children try to separate truth from what are called jokes in a puzzling, grown-up world.
“I heard Miss Kirke telling mother there was heaps of pennies lost on the sands,” she said; “and mother doesn’t know how she’s ever going to keep me and Jimmy in boots – we kick them out so. She says we shall have to wear wooden ones like little foreign boys and girls, and I don’t w-want to. The others would s-shout us so!”
Poor little Sally’s voice broke at the prospect of such unpleasant notoriety, and Elizabeth put her arms round that dear, pitiful thing – a baby who has learned to think too soon.
“Mother was only joking about the wooden shoes, ducky,” she comforted. “But I have heard of people finding money on the sands; and I’m rather a good looker. I nearly always find things. Shall I help?”
“Y-yes, please,” said Sally, smiling through the end of a sob.
And as Andy looked at them, all the dreams came back that he had known before – only glorified because she was there; and the protecting tenderness that marked her out always from other girls seemed to him now so beautiful that he adored it in her, as men for ages past have adored it in the symbol of all loving womanhood.
“I’ll search too,” was all he said, however.
“Come,” said Elizabeth, drying Sally’s eyes with a little handkerchief that smelt of violets, “here’s Mr. Deane going to help as well. We’re certain to find some pennies now.”
It was an entrancing game, after that, to hide pennies and then sixpences under little brown heaps of seaweed behind Sally’s back while one or other of them engaged her attention, and then to hear her shrieks of joy as she pounced upon them. It might almost be said that she became young again as she flung herself down on the sand and grubbed excitedly under a partly decayed starfish.
“Ugh! Don’t touch that!” said Elizabeth. “Look here. Here’s another penny.”
And that proved to be the last, for the other children were shouting that it was time for dinner, and Mrs. Simpson was beckoning with a peremptory umbrella from her seat on the sand-hills.
“Anyway,” said Sally, tying up the booty in her microscopic handkerchief – “Anyway, there’ll be enough to buy real boots for Jimmy. I don’t know what we should do with him if he had to wear anything that people shouted – he’d never stop fighting. And the policeman might get him after all.”
There gleamed out the preoccupation of Sally’s existence – the endeavour to prevent Jimmy’s behaviour reaching a pass where the often-threatened policeman really would do his duty.