“Did you like it?”
“I loved it,” said Iris fervently, “The bathing, and the nice swishy noise the waves made on the beach, and the smell of the sea, and the rocks, and the sea-weed, and shrimps, and the tiny little crabs. It was lovely.”
“It’s a pity you can’t often go,” remarked Mrs Fotheringham.
“Yes,” said Iris with a sigh, “it is. But, you see, the lodgings are so dear, and there’s such a lot of us.”
“Ah!” said Mrs Fotheringham, “it’s a bad thing to be poor.”
Iris looked up quickly. Those were the very words she had said to herself when she first arrived at Paradise Court. It seemed almost that her godmother must have overheard them, and yet that was quite impossible. A bad thing to be poor! Somehow Iris felt now that there might be worse things than want of money. It flashed across her, as she looked at Mrs Fotheringham, that she should not like to be a rich old lady with only a green parrot to love her.
“How would you like to have plenty of money?” asked Mrs Fotheringham.
“It would be very nice,” said Iris, resting her chin on her hand, and proceeding to consider the subject. “I could buy presents for them all at home: lop-eared rabbits for Max, and a raven for Clement, and wax dolls for Susie and Dottie—they’ve only got rag ones.”
“Humph!” was her godmother’s only reply; “now you may run out into the garden.”
Always glad to be released from Mrs Fotheringham’s presence, and her shaded room, Iris took her straw-hat and ran out into the sunshine. As she went she turned over in her mind all the things she would buy and do if she were rich. This was not at all a new employment, for she and her brothers often did it at home, though they always differed widely as to the best way of spending the imaginary fortune. “I would buy mother a light green satin dress and pearls,” she thought, “and give father a whole lot of books all bound in scarlet and gold, and—”