“It’s beastly rotten to go to bed at a quarter past nine,” Michael declared.
“We can talk up in our room,” suggested Alan.
“I vote we talk about the Pierrots,” said Michael, affectionately clasping his chum’s arm.
“Yes, I vote we do too,” Alan agreed.
The next day the Pierrots were gone. Apparently they had had a quarrel with the Corporation and moved farther along the South Coast. Michael and Alan were dismayed, and in their disgust forsook the beach for the shrubberies of Devonshire Park where in gloomy by-ways, laurel-shaded, they spoke quietly of their loss.
“I wonder if we shall ever see that girl again,” said Michael. “I’d know her anywhere. If I was grown up I’d know her. I swear I would.”
“She was a clinker,” Alan regretted.
“I don’t suppose we shall ever see a girl half as pretty,” Michael thought.
“Not by a long chalk,” Alan agreed. “I don’t suppose there is a girl anywhere in the world a quarter as pretty. I think that girl was simply fizzing.”
They paced the mossy path in silence and suddenly round a corner came upon a bench on which were seated two girls in blue dresses. Michael and Alan found the coincidence so extraordinary that they stared hard, even when the two girls put their heads down and looked sidelong and giggled and thumped each other and giggled again.