elieved the oppression of one
still more burdensome, and helped her to drive it from her thoughts.
We speak of the collision of the record in her mind of what her
daughter was, and whence, with the fact that Sally was winding herself
more and more, daughterwise, round the heart of the man whose bond
with her mother she, small and unconscious, had had so large a share
in rending asunder twenty years ago. It was to her, in its victory
over crude physical fact, even while it oppressed her, a bewildering
triumph of spirit over matter, of soul over sense, this firm
consolidating growth of an affection such as Nature means, but often
fails to reach, between child and parent. And as it grew and grew, her
child's actual paternity shrank and dwindled, until it might easily
have been held a matter for laughter, but for the black cloud of
Devildom that hung about it, and stamped her as the infant of a
Nativity in the Venusberg, whose growing after-life had gone far to
shroud the horror of its lurid caverns with a veil of oblivion.

We say all these things quite seriously of our Sally, in spite of
her incorrigible slanginess and vulgarity. We can now go on to St.
Sennans-on-Sea, where we shall find her in full blow, but very sticky
with the salt water she passes really too much of her time in, even
for a merpussy.

CHAPTER XXVII

ST. SENNANS-ON-SEA. MISS GWENDOLEN ARKWRIGHT. WOULD ANY OTHER CHILD HAVE
BEEN SALLY? HOW MRS. IGGULDEN'S COUSIN SOLOMON SURRENDERED HIS COUCH

St. Sennans-on-Sea consists of two parts--the new and the old. The old
part is a dear little old place, and the new part is beastly. So Sally
says, and she must know, because this is her third visit.

The old part consists of Mrs. Iggulden's and the houses we have
described on either side of her, and maybe two dozen more wooden or
black-brick dwellings of the same sort; also of the beach and its
interesting lines of breakwater that are so very jolly to jump off or
to lie down and read novels under in the sea smell. Only not too near
the drains, if you know it. If you don't know it, it doesn't matter so
much, because the smell reminds you of the seaside, and seems right
and fitting. You must take care how you jump, though, off these
breakwaters, because where they are not washed inconceivably clean,
and all their edges smoothed away beyond belief by the tides that come
and go for ever, they are slippery with green sea-ribbons that cling
close to them,