ther a girl should or should not dive
off a boat rowed by an unmarried man, no one is less likely to form a
correct judgment than a lady who was divorced from her husband twenty
years ago in India. But I say nothing against Mrs. Fenwick. She is, so
far as she is known to me, an excellent person, and a good wife and
mother. Now, my dear Conrad, I must rest, for I fear I have talked
too much."

Poor Prosy! All the edge of his joy of the morning was taken off. But
never mind! It would very soon be Sally herself again, and his thirsty
soul would be drinking deep draughts of her at the pier-end, where the
appointment was to be kept with the young lady and her dolly.

CHAPTER XXXIII

OF AN INTERMITTENT CURRENT AT THE PIER-END, AND OF DOLLY'S FORTITUDE.
HOW FENWICK PUT HIS HEAD IN THE JAWS OF THE FUTURE UNAWARES, AND PROSY
DIDN'T COME. HOW SALLY AND HER STEP SAW PUNCH, AND OF A THIN END OF A
FATAL WEDGE. BUT ROSALIND SAW NO COMING CLOUD

An iron pier, with a sense of lattice structure about it, is not to
our old-fashioned minds nearly so fascinating as the wooden fabric of
our early memories at more than one seaside resort of our boyhood. St.
Sennan was of another school, or had become a convert or pervert, if
a Saint may be judged by his pier. For this was iron or steel all
through, barring the timber flooring whose planks were a quarter of an
inch apart, so that you could kneel down to see the water through if
you were too short to see over the advertisements a sordid spirit of
commercialism had blocked the side-railings with. And if you were
three or four, and there was nobody to hold you up (because they were
carrying baby), you did so kneel, and as like as not got tar on your
knees, and it wouldn't come off. Anyhow, Miss Gwendolen Arkwright did,
on her way to the appointment, and was reproved therefore. On which
she also reproved dolly in identical terms, dolly having had a look
through as well, though, indeed, she can hardly be said to have knelt.

But to console us for the loss of the solid groins and bolted timbers
of our youth, and to make it palatable to us that the great seas
should follow each other for ever almost unopposed--instead of being
broken into floods of drenching foam visitors get wet-through in--this
unsubstantial-looking piece of cage-work expanded as soon as it was
well out in the open channel, and almost provided John Bull with
another "other island." And whereon the pier-company's