Ah! the Saint was
a first-rate sort. She had said that she did not want anyone to attend on
her. She would, get herself a bit of lunch in the dining-room. Mrs. Latch
allowed Esther to hurry on the dinner, and by one o'clock they had all
finished. Sarah and Margaret were going into Brighton to do some shopping,
Grover was going to Worthing to spend the afternoon with the wife of one
of the guards of the Brighton and South Coast Railway. Mrs. Latch went
upstairs to lie down. So it grew lonelier and lonelier in the kitchen.
Esther's sewing fell out of her hands, and she wondered what she should
do. She thought that she might go down to the beach, and soon after she
put on her hat and stood thinking, remembering that she had not been by
the sea, that she had not seen the sea since she was a little girl. But
she remembered the tall ships that came into the harbour, sail falling
over sail, and the tall ships that floated out of the harbour, sail rising
over sail, catching the breeze as they went aloft--she remembered them.
A suspension bridge, ornamented with straight-tailed lions, took her over
the weedy river, and having crossed some pieces of rough grass, she
climbed the shingle bank. The heat rippled the blue air, and the sea, like
an exhausted caged beast, licked the shingle. Sea-poppies bloomed under
the wheels of a decaying bathing-machine, and Esther wondered.
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