The coachman was
to match. Middle-aged, clean-shaven, his Napoleonic face set as a mask,
his undress livery of pepper-and-salt mixture soberly immaculate. He
touched his hat when our young gentleman appeared and mounted beside him;
the horse, meanwhile, shivering a little and showing the red of its
nostrils as the train, with strident whistlings, drew out of the station
bound westward to Stourmouth and Barryport.
Later the horse broke up the abiding inertia of Marychurch High Street,
by dancing as it passed the engine of a slowly ambulant thrashing
machine; and only settled fairly into its stride when the three-arched,
twelfth century stone bridge over the Arne was passed, and the
road--leaving the last scattered houses of the little town--turned south
and seaward skirting the shining expanse of The Haven and threading the
semi-amphibious hamlets of Horny Cross and Lampit.
CHAPTER III
THE DOUBTFULLY HARMONIOUS PARTS OF A WHOLE
A long, low, rectangular and rather narrow room, supported across the
centre--where passage walls had been cut away--by an avenue of dumpy
wooden pillars, four on either side, leading to a glass door opening on
to the garden.
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