AT ST. SENNANS

The next day the morning was bright and the sea was clear of
Poseidon's ponies. They had gone somewhere else. Therefore, it
behooved Mrs. Lobjoit to get breakfast quick, because it was absurd
to expect anybody to go in directly after, and the water wouldn't be
good later than half-past ten. Which Sally, coming downstairs at eight,
impressed on Mrs. Lobjoit, who entered her own recognisances that it
should appear as by magic the very minute your mamma came down. For
it is one of the pleasures of anticipation-of-a-joy-to-come to bring
about its antecedents too soon, and so procure a blank period of
unqualified existence to indulge Hope in without alloy. Even so, when
true prudence wishes to catch a train, she orders her cab an hour
before, and takes tickets twenty minutes before, and arrives on the
platform eighteen minutes before there is the slightest necessity to
do so; and then she stands on the said platform and lives for the
train that is to be, and inquires of every guard, ticket-taker, and
pointsman with respect to every linear yard of the platform edge,
whether her train is going to come up there; and they ask each other
questions, and give prismatic information; and then the train for
Paradise (let us say) comes reluctantly backwards into the station
with friends standing on its margin, and prudence seizes her valise
and goes at a hand-gallop to the other end, where the _n_th class
is, and is only just in time to get a corner seat.

So, though there was no fear of the tide going out as fast as the
train for Paradise, Sally, relying on Mrs. Lobjoit, who had become
a very old friend in eight weeks, felt she had done well to be
beforehand, and, as breakfast would be twenty minutes, sat down to
write a letter to Tishy. She wrote epistle-wise, heedless of style
and stops, and as her mother was also twenty minutes--we are not
responsible for these expressions--she wrote a heap of it. Then
events thickened, as Fenwick, returning from an early dip, met the
postman outside, and came in bearing an expected letter which Sally
pounced upon.

"All about the row!" said she, attacking an impregnable corner of the
envelope with a fork-point, in a fever of impatience to get at the
contents. "Hang these envelopes! There, that's done it! Whatever they
want to sticky them up so for I can't imagine...."

"Get your breakfast, kitten, and read it after."

"I dare say. Catch me! No, I'm the sort that never wa