houted and tapped
at to hold tight, while capstan-power tugs and strains to bring her
dressing-room up a sharp slope out of reach of the sea.

"Well, Jeremiah, and what have _you_ got to say for yourself?" said
the merpussy soon after, just out of her machine, with a huge mass
of briny black hair spread out to dry. The tails had to be split and
sorted and shaken out at intervals to give the air a chance. Sally
was blue and sticky all over, and her finger-tips and nails all one
colour. But her spirits were boisterous.

"What about?"

"What about, indeed? About not coming into the water to be pulled out.
You promised you would, you know you did!"

"I did; but subject to a reasonable interpretation of the compact.
I should have been out of my depth ever so long before you could reach
me. Why didn't you come closer?"

"How could I, with a fat, pink party drying himself next door? _You_
wouldn't have, if it had been you, and him Goody Vereker...."

"Sal-ly! Darling!" Her mother remonstrates.

"We-ell, there's nothing in that! As if we didn't all know what the
Goody would look like...."

Rosalind is really afraid that the strict mamma of her husband's
recent incubus will overhear, and sit at another breakwater next day.
"_Come_ along!" she says, dispersively and emphatically. "We shall
have the shoulder of mutton spoiled."

"No, we shan't! Shall we, Jeremiah? We've talked it over, me and
Jeremiah. Haven't we, Gaffer Fenwick?" She is splitting up the salt
congestions of his mane as she sits by him on the shingle. He confirms
her statement.

"We have. And we have decided that if we are two hours late it may be
done enough. But that in any case the so-called gravy will be grey
hot water."

"Get up and come along, and don't be a mad kitten! I shall go and
leave you two behind. So now you know." And Rosalind goes away up
the shingle.

"What makes mother look so serious sometimes, kitten? She did just now."

"She's jealous of you and me flirting like we do. Don't put your hat
on; let the sun dry you up a bit. Does she really look serious though?
Do you mean it?"

"Yes, I mean it. It comes and goes. But when I ask her she only laughs
at me." A painful thought crosses Sally's mind. Is it possible that
some of her reckless escapades have _froisse_'d her mother? She goes
off into a moment's contemplation, then suddenly jumps up with, "Come
along, Jeremiah," and follows her up the beach.

But the gravity on the face