ttering bars, and cushioned drawing-rooms. They had the
most exciting meal in the restaurant that Annie had ever had; also the
most expensive; the price of it indeed staggered her; still, William
Henry did not appear to mind that one meal should exceed the cost of two
days living in Birches Street. Then they went up into the market-place
again, and lo! the market-place had somehow of itself got into the
middle of the sea!

Before the end of the voyage they had tea at threepence a cup. Annie
reflected that the best "Home and Colonial" tea cost eighteenpence a
pound, and that a pound would make two hundred and twenty cups.
Similarly with the bread and butter which they ate, and the jam! But it
was glorious. Not the jam (which Annie could have bettered), but life!
Particularly as the sea was smooth! Presently she descried a piece of
chalk sticking up against the horizon, and it was Douglas lighthouse.

III

There followed six days of delirium, six days of the largest conceivable
existence. The holiday-makers stopped in a superb boarding-house on the
promenade, one of about a thousand superb boarding-houses. The day's
proceedings began at nine o'clock with a regal breakfast, partaken of at
a very long table which ran into a bow window. At nine o'clock, in all
the thousand boarding-houses, a crowd of hungry and excited men and
women sat down thus to a very long table, and consumed the same dishes,
that is to say, Manx herrings, and bacon and eggs, and jams. Everybody
ate as much as he could. William Henry was never content with less than
two herrings, two eggs, about four ounces of bacon, and as much jam as
would render a whole Board school sticky. And in four hours after that
he was ready for an enormous dinner, and so was she; and in five hours
after that they neither of them had the slightest disinclination for a
truly high and complex tea. Of course, the cost was fabulous.
Thirty-five shillings per week each. Annie would calculate that, with
thirty boarders and extras, the boarding-house was taking in money at
the rate of over forty pounds a week. She would also calculate that
about a hundred thousand herrings and ten million little bones were
swallowed in Douglas each day.

But the cost of the boarding-house was as naught. It was the flowing out
of coins between meals that deprived Annie of breath. They were always
doing something. Sailing in a boat! Rowing in a boat! Bathing! The Pier!
Sand minstrels! Excursi