turus,
but scarcely equal to metaphysics--idleness that lends itself readily
to turning tables and automatic writing, and gets some convincing
phenomena, and finds out that so-and-so is an extraordinary
medium--idleness that says that letter will do just as well to-morrow,
and Smith must wait--such hours as these disintegrate the moral fibre
and anaesthetize our sense of responsibility, and make us so oblivious
of musical criticism that we accept brass bands and inexplicable
serenaders, white or black, and even accordions and hurdy-gurdies, as
intrinsic features of the _ensemble_--the _fengshui_ of the time and
place--and give them a penny if we've got one.

That is and will be Mr. and Mrs. Julius Bradshaw's memory of those
three days or so, when they have grown quite old together, as we hope
they may. And if you add memory of an intoxicated delirium of love--of
love that was on no account to be shown or declared or even hinted
at--and of a tiresome hitch or qualification, an unselfish parent in
full blow, you will have the record that is to remain in the mind of
Conrad Vereker.

CHAPTER XXXI

HOW SALLY DIDN'T CONFESS ABOUT THE DOCTOR, AND JEREMIAH CAME TO ST.
SENNANS ONCE MORE

That evening Sally sat with her mother on the very uncomfortable seat
they affected on what was known as the Parade, a stone's throw from
the house for a good stone-thrower. It had a little platform of
pebbles to stand on, and tamarisks to tickle you from behind when the
wind was northerly. It was a corrugated and painful seat, and had
a strange power of finding out your tender vertebrae and pulverising
them, whatever your stature might be. It fell forward when its
occupants, goaded to madness, bore too hard on its front bar, and
convinced them they would do well, henceforward, to hold it
artificially in its place. But Rosalind and her daughter forgave
it all these defects--perhaps because they were really too lazy to
protest even against torture. It was the sea air. Anyhow, there they
sat that evening, waiting for Padlock's omnibus to come, bringing
Fenwick from the station. Just at the moment at which the story
overtakes them, Rosalind was looking wonderfully handsome in the
sunset light, and Sally was thinking to herself what a beautiful
mother she had; and how, when the after-glow dies, it will leave its
memory in the red gold that is somewhere in the rich brown her eyes
are resting on. Sally was fond of dwelling on her mothe