Both she and Elsie had removed their hats, and while Elsie’s hair dropped naturally into soft, flattened curls and rings, Geraldine’s clung damply in straight, short wisps to her neck and forehead, and she constantly raised her hand to push away, quite ineffectually, a straggling end that immediately fell down again.
“Hell, I call this,” she remarked shortly, as Elsie, stumbling over bags and packages and the feet of other passengers, reached her side and propped herself up against the side of the swaying train.
“You’re a nice one to take on a holiday, I must say,” Elsie retorted, but without acrimony. She felt that nothing would really matter if she could once get the assurance that she craved.
“Horace is in a foul temper. He never can stand the hot weather. I’m sure I hope it’ll be cooler at the sea than what it is here. Have you brought a new bathing costume, Geraldine?”
“M’m. A blue one, with a decent skirt—not one of those horrible skin-tight things you see in the picture papers. Improper, I call them.”
“You couldn’t be improper if you tried,” said Elsie cryptically. “Besides, there’ll be nobody to go in the water with you except me. Horace never bathes—makes him turn green, or something.”
She eyed her sister carefully as she spoke. Something in the wariness of Geraldine’s return glance gave her a rising hope.
“I’m sure I wish we were going to have someone we knew there. Horace would be much easier to keep in a decent temper if he had another man to go with sometimes.”
Then Geraldine spoke. “That boy Leslie Morrison said something about coming down one day this week, and spending part of his holiday at Torquay. He was awfully keen I should go and stay with his mother, near Bristol, too.”
“Was he? Well, you could do that later,” said Elsie. She was nearly breathless with triumph, but strove to make her voice sound matter-of-fact. “But I hope to goodness he will come to Torquay. It’ll make all the difference to Horace.”