shown its usual untrustworthiness and gone down.
The wind's grievance--very perceptible to the leeward of keyholes and
window-cracks--may have been against this instability. It had been
looking forward to a day's rest, and here this meteorology must needs
be fussing. Neptune on the contrary was all the fresher for his
half-holiday, and was trotting out tiny white ponies all over his
fields, who played bo-peep with each other in and out of the valleys
of the plough-land. But they were grey valleys now, that yesterday
were smiling in the sun. And the sky was a mere self-coloured sky
(a modern expression, as unconvincing as most of its congeners), and
wanted to make everything else as grey as itself. Also there came
drifts of fine rain that wetted you through, and your umbrella wasn't
any good. So a great many of the visitors to St. Sennans thought they
would stop at home and get those letters written.

Sally wouldn't admit that the day was flat _per se_, but only that it
had become so owing to the departure of Laetitia and her husband. She
reviewed the latter a good deal, as one who had recently been well
under inspection and had stood the test. He was really a very nice
fellow, haberdasher or no, wasn't he, mother? To which Rosalind
replied that he was a very nice fellow indeed, only so quiet. If he
had had his violin with him, he would have been much more perceptible.
But she supposed it was best to travel with it as little as possible.
For it had been decided, all things considered, that the precious
Strad should be left locked up at home. "It's got an insurance policy
all to itself," said Sally, "for three hundred pounds." She was quite
awestruck by the three hundred golden sovereigns which these pounds
would have been if they had had an existence of their own off paper.

"_You_ ought to have an insurance policy all to yourself, Sarah," said
Fenwick. "Only I don't believe any office would accept you. Fancy your
swimming out like that yesterday! How far did you go?"

"Round the buoy and aback again. I say, Jeremiah, if ever I get
drowned, mind you rush to the bathing-machine and see if there's a
copy of 'Ally Sloper' or 'Tit-Bits'. Because there'd be fifty pounds
for each. Think of that!" Sally is delighted with these sums, too, to
the extent of quite losing sight of the sacrifice necessary for their
acquisition.

"Two whole fifties!" Fenwick says, adding after consideration: "I
think we had sooner keep our daughte