CHAPTER I
HERO AND HEROINE MEET
The advent of its regatta is usually the herald of a sea-side season's demise. Wivernsea, as yet, is not sufficiently developed to justify indulgence in a water festival. So far, its carnival flights have been confined within the limits of flower shows and the treats of its Sunday school.
The builder—his surname is Jerry—is around with a rule though. His conspiracy with the man who plots lands and dispenses free luncheons and railway tickets, will possibly wreak a change on that part of the map's countenance. Increased population may render the place more famous—or infamous. So very much depends on one's viewpoint.
The houses of Wivernsea are built in its bay. Stuck in round the fringe of it like teeth in a lower jaw. Picture to yourself the long ago—the bay's origin—and the present appearance of the place may come before you. If possible to introduce a belief that there were giants in the earth in those days it will make realization simpler. Because it looks as if a mammoth had snapped at the coast just there and bitten out a huge mouthful.
If your imagination is sufficiently elastic to give play to it, conceive houses being dropped into the marks left by the giant's teeth—a sort of dental stopping. So may be garnered a fair idea of the presentment of this particular indentation in the land.
When the goose of Michaelmas is shaking in its scales, Wivernsea lodging letters encroach on the farmer's privilege. The closing time of their harvest is near enough to be grumbled at. It is painful knowledge to them that visitors scuttle away as September ends. The exodus is due to some absurd belief that the weather then—like a school at the advent of the holidays—breaks up.
In the ears of one man—William Masters by name, binder-together-of-sensational-incidents in-book-form by profession—such grumbles tingled pleasantly. Because the usual October Wivernsea weather is mild and bright and rainless. Being a non-gregarious man, the place shaped before his eyes as a land flowing with milk and honey. He knew it to be good then.