"I'll take this discovery in lieu of all payment," declared the colonel. "You and your companions, the Sea Urchins, are welcome to have free run of the place while you are here. Good-bye, little friend! You always seem to turn up in exceptional circumstances. You and I appear to have a few interests in common, so I hope that some time I may have the pleasure of meeting you again."
CHAPTER XIV.
A WET DAY.
"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits
Where hope is coldest and despair most sits."
THE estrangement between Isobel and her friend was of very short duration after all. That same evening they had met on the Parade, and Belle had run up with her former affectionate manner, so completely ignoring the remembrance of any differences between them that Isobel thankfully let the matter slide, only too glad to resume the friendship on the old terms, and hoping that such an unpleasant episode might not occur again. The two had arranged to make an expedition together to the old town on the following day, but the morning proved so very wet that it was impossible for any one to go out of doors.
"It's a perfect deluge of a day," said Isobel, looking hopelessly at the ceaseless drip, drip which descended from the leaden skies. "It doesn't seem as if it ever meant to clear up again. I think it must have rained like this on the first morning of the Flood. It couldn't have been worse, at any rate."
The back sitting-room of a lodging-house does not, as a rule, afford the most brilliant of views, so the scene which met Isobel's eyes was hardly calculated to raise her spirits. The paved yard behind was swimming with water, through which a drenched and disconsolate tabby cat, excluded from the paradise of the kitchen, was attempting to pick its way, shaking its paws at every step. Marine Terrace being a comparatively new row, the back premises were still in a somewhat unfinished condition, and instead of gardens and flower-beds, your eye was greeted by heaps of sand and mortar, bricks and rubbish, not yet carted away by the builders, which, added to piles of empty bottles and old hampers, gave a rather forlorn appearance to the place. After watching pussy's struggles with the elements, and seeing her finally seek refuge in the coal-house, Isobel took a turn to the front door, and stood looking over the Parade, where the rolling mist almost obscured all sight of the sea, and sky and water were of the same dull neutral gray. The road was empty, not even the most venturesome visitors having braved the wind and weather that morning; while Biddy herself, usually as punctual as the clock, had evidently decided it was too wet a day to vend her fish. There was absolutely nothing to be seen; nevertheless Isobel would have stood there watching the endless drops falling from the unkindly skies, had not Mrs. Jackson appeared from the kitchen, and declaring that the rain was beating into the hall, firmly closed the door and shut out any further prospect.
"You'd get cold too, missy," she said, "standin' in a full draught, for Polly will leave that back door open, say what I will, and it turns chilly of a wet day. One can have too much fresh air, to my mind. There was a gentleman stayed here last summer, now, just crazy he was on what he called 'hygiene;' bathed regular every morning before breakfast, no matter how the tide might be. I warned him it was a-injuring his health to go in the water on an empty stomach, but he didn't take no notice of what I said, and lay out on damp sand, and sat under open windows, till he ended up with a bad bout of the brown-chitis, with the doctor comin' every day, and me turned sick nurse to poultice him—Emma Jane bein' at home then, or I couldn't have found the time to do it. I've no opinion of these modern health dodges as folks sets such store by now. In my young days we never so much as thought about drains, and if the pig-sty was at the back door, no one was any the worse for it! I call it right-down interferin' the way these inspectors come round sayin' you mustn't even throw a bucket of potato skins down in your own yard. Nuisance, indeed! It's them as is the nuisance. Their nasty disinfectants smell far worse, to my mind, than a few cabbage leaves. My grandmother lived to ninety-four, and never slept with her bedroom window open in her life, not even on the hottest of summer days, and drew her drinkin' water regular from the churchyard well, which they tell you now is swarmin' with 'microbes,' or whatever they call 'em. I never saw any, though I've let my pail down in it many a time; and it was a deal sweeter and fresher, to my taste, than what you get laid on in lead pipes. Jackson may go in for this new-fangled 'sanitation' if he likes, votin' for all kinds of improvements by the Town Council, which only adds to the rates. I'm an old-fashioned woman, and stick to old-fashioned country ways, and I think draughts is draughts, and gives folks colds and toothaches, call 'em by what high-soundin' names you will."
Judging the weather to be absolutely hopeless, and without the slightest intention of clearing up, Isobel went back to the sitting-room, where Polly had just taken away the breakfast things, and looked round for some means of amusing herself.
"I don't believe the postman has been yet," she said. "What a terrible day for him to go round! I should think he feels as if he ought to come in a boat. Why, there's his rap-tap now. I wonder if there are any letters for us?"