“You don’t like me, do you?”
“Us’ally I like everyone,” said Peter; “I don’t know you yet.”
“I’m a cross old woman. If you don’t mind losing your play, you can come and sit beside me.”
And Peter sat down. It was dull for him. Across the sands boats on wheels raced with spread sails, dashing toward the silver thread. Ponies, which you could hire for a few pennies, were galloping up and down. Across the flat beach, like a monstrous centipede, with trestles for legs, the long pier crawled with its head in the sea and its tail on land. And the pier had its own delirious excitements: on show, in the casino at the end, was a troop of performing fleas who drove one another in the tiniest of hansom-cabs. Peter knew because a lady-flea, named Ethel, had been lost; a reward for her recovery was advertised all over Sandport. Ten shillings were offered and hundreds of fleas had been submitted for inspection. Peter had a wild dream that he might find Ethel: with ten shillings he could escape to London from this Egypt of exile in the sand.
Miss Rufus broke in on his reverie. She had been wondering how anyone who had the right to Peter could be so foolish as to do without him.
“Why did they send you?”
“Send me to you?”
“Yes.”
“Because I made Kay cry about heaven.”
“Humph! D’you know what it says about heaven in the Bible?—that there’s no marriage. Was that what she cried about?”