"Oh," said Dora, and now her sobs were beginning to turn into sniffs, "you don't know how I felt! And I've felt most awful ever since, but those poor, poor people——"
At this moment Mrs. Bax came down on to the beach by the wooden steps that lead from the sea-wall where the grass grows between the stones.
"Hullo!" she said, "hurt yourself, my Dora-dove?"
Dora was rather a favourite of hers.
"It's all right now," said Dora.
"That's all right," said Mrs. Bax, who has learnt in anti-what's-its-name climes the great art of not asking too many questions. "Mrs. Red House has come to lunch. She went this morning to see that boy's mother—you know, the boy the others wouldn't play with?"
We said "Yes."
"Well, Mrs. Red House has arranged to get the woman some work—like the dear she is—the woman told her that the little lady—and that's you, Dora—had given the little boy one pound thirteen and sevenpence."
Mrs. Bax looked straight out to sea through her gold-rimmed spectacles, and went on—
"That must have been about all you had among the lot of you. I don't want to jaw, but I think you're a set of little bricks, and I must say so or expire on the sandy spot."