We were tightly packed in the shelter on the promenade waiting the end of the thunderstorm. There were two native boys singing a temperance song to the tune of "There's nae luck aboot the hoose," translated to a dirge with a drawling refrain of "No d-r-r-rink! no d-r-r-rink for me!"
This they would whisperingly sing, with stealthy inquiring glances at the people who pressed about them, and then hysterically giggle. But the stolid, respectable crowd of "visitors" from London, stiff with the recent dignity of seeing their names printed in the visitors' list (with "Esquire" at the end!) would not stoop to notice these frivolous ebullitions. They stolidly glowered with heavy impassive glare, oblivious, it seemed, not only of the boys, but also of each other.
Now this starchiness would not have been remarkable in Southport or Folkestone, where one meets so many pompous, old, superior persons, puffed up with the importance of their little pension, annuity, or snug, retiring hoard; nor in Scarborough, where many visitors are genuine "toffs," and naturally privileged to look down upon the common herd.
But this crowd at Lowestoft consisted unmistakably of the genteel working class—the clerks at £150 to £300 a year, the small shopkeepers, the—in short, the genteel working class.
In Lancashire this class, though disposed to a sort of blunt arrogance at home, become humanised when holiday-making. They will condescend to fuse with their "inferiors," and when united, as in this case, by common misfortune, they will even condescend to be affable.
Not so the genteel workman of Cockaigne.
That he is a workman he never remembers; that he is genteel he never forgets.
Even when he has divested himself of his customary frock-coat and tall silk hat, he remains still clothed with his cumbrous and sombre gentility. It is to him as valour was to his forebears. It serves him in lieu of honour or religion. His gentility is of his possessions the most sacred: rather than that, he would lose his honesty, his manliness, and his humanity.
The silence was broken by the irruption of a bustling newcomer, who, as he shook his dripping cap, cheerily cried, "Good Laur! it does come down!"
He looked round for acknowledgment, but the genteel gentlemen from London stonily stared into vacancy.