" she asked. "Do you? We've got a very good
piano in the drawing-room.... I'm passionately fond of music myself.
It's the sorrow of my life I can't play."

Sally grimaced. The drawing-room was glimpsed--a room with settees and
big chairs and a strident carpet and antimacassars and small palms in
pots. Large windows made it beautifully light. And as she took in these
details Sally hurried on, and found herself in a narrow dun-coloured
passage, where brown doors with numbers upon them indicated the
bedrooms. It was into the second of these rooms that she was led, and in
spite of the frowst she looked with eagerness at a further door and
windows that opened upon the balcony of which Gaga had spoken. The
windows were lace-curtained, but she could see through the curtains to
what seemed like a conservatory.

"You see the door opens on to the balcony," explained Mrs. Tennant,
while Gaga put down the bags and wiped his hands with his handkerchief.
"Looks right across the river. I'm afraid the tide's out now; but when
it's up you see all sorts of things floating up and down."

"What sort of things?" demanded Sally, going to the glass sides of the
building and peering down at the mud.

"Oh, _all_ sorts...." Mrs. Tennant was a little confused, but
conversational. "That old building you see across there is ... well, it
used to be a granary; but nobody's used it for a long time. There's a
dinghy in the mud over there. It's Mr. Scuffle's...."

Dinghy! Instantly Sally's mind jerked back to a day she had spent with
Toby, when he had teased her about her ignorance of boats. Toby! So that
was a dinghy! Just like any other boat.

The balcony was empty; but trays still lay upon two of the light iron
tables, and a newspaper had been tossed upon the matted floor. All the
chairs were of wicker, and in them lay little hard cushions covered with
dirtied cretonne. Through the long glass side one could see the
slowly-flowing river (for the tide was about to turn), and the already
dimming sky, and the houses upon the rising ground that lay beyond the
farther bank, and the bridge upon which people were walking. Sally
looked up and down the momentarily sinister river. She was afraid of
water, afraid of its secrecy and its current; and she turned away from
her contemplation with a sense of chill.

"I'm cold," she said, brightly. "Bertram.... Could we have some tea,
Mrs. Tennant?"

"Certainly. You'd like a wash? I'll get the tea at once...."