tfalls.

* * * * *

"What have you and your medical adviser been talking about all the
while, there in mid-ocean?" Fenwick forgets the late event with
pleasure. Sally, with her hair threatening to come down in the wind,
is enough to stampede a troop of nightmares.

"Poor Prosy!" is all the answer that comes at present. Perhaps if that
uncontrolled black coil will be tractable she will concede more anon.
You can't get your hair back under your hat and walk quick and talk,
all at the same time.

"Poorer than usual, Sarah?" But really just at this corner it's as
much as you can do, if you have skirts, to get along at all; to say
nothing of the way such loose ends as you indulge in turn on you and
flagellate your face in the wind. Oh, the vicious energy of that
stray ribbon! Fancy having to use up one hand to hold that!

But a lull came when the corner was fairly turned, in the lee of a
home of many nets, where masses of foam-fleck had found a respite, and
leisure to collapse, a bubble at a time. You could see the prism-scale
each had to itself, each of the millions, if you looked close enough.
Collectively, their appearance was slovenly. A chestnut-coloured man
a year old, who looked as if he meant some day to be a boatswain,
was seated on a pavement that cannot have soothed his unprotected
flesh--flint pebbles can't, however round--and enjoying the mysterious
impalpable nature of this foam. However, even for such hands as
his--and Sally wanted to kiss them badly--they couldn't stop. She
got her voice, though, in the lull.

"Yes--a little. I've found out all about Prosy."

"Found out about him?"

"I've made him talk about it. It's all about his ma and a young lady
he's in love with...." Fenwick's _ha!_ or _h'm!_ or both joined
together, was probably only meant to hand the speaker on, but the
tone made her suspicious. She asked him why he said that, imitating
it; on which he answered, "Why shouldn't he?" "Because," said Sally,
"if you fancy Prosy's in love with me, you're mistaken."

"Very good! Cut along, Sarah! You've made him talk about the young
lady he's in love with...?"

"Well, he as good as talked about her, anyhow! _I_ understood quite
plain. He wants to marry her awfully, but he's afraid to say so to
her, because of his ma."

"Doesn't Mrs. Vereker like her?"

"Dotes upon her, he says. Ug-g-h! No, it isn't that. It's the lugging
the poor girl into his ma's sphere of in