"The very thing," the Spawer decided. "Let 's have tea at Shippus together, and walk back like giants refreshed. Come; what do you say to that? I say beautiful! beautiful! What do you say?"
Apparently the girl said "Oh!" and having said that, seemed able to say no more.
"Very well, then," the Spawer declared, artfully taking the "Oh!" for assent. "Come along and let 's tell 'em to put the kettle on, and be sure to give us tea-leaves out of the canister."
He took possession of the basket again, that she released into his hands as token of submission to his will.
"You won't ... lose the cover cloth, though, will you?" she besought him, when he showed a tendency to swing it too freely.
"I 'll stuff it in my pocket," he promised her, suiting action to his words. "And then I shall be sure to have it safe with me at Cliff Wrangham when you want it."
Then slowly and happily they retraced their steps towards the sea.
Being a Tuesday, and harvest-time to boot—the sacred Sunday feeling of silence covered Shippus too beneath its beneficent mantle. Moreover, week-days are the only Sabbaths that this place ever knows. As soon as the church bells of Ullbrig announce to the landlady of the Royal Arms (which is four fifths of Shippus, as everybody knows) the hour of divine service, she throws open the dingy business door, and listens for the welcome rumble of the first brake load of travelers who have driven out the thirteen odd miles from Hunmouth to be supplied with the drink that would be denied them (by the devout act of a Protestant and religious Government) at their own door. There is nothing at all royal about the Royal Arms except the name. It is disclosed with the remaining few cottages of Shippus at a quick turn of the road—an irregular, dirty-washed building—presenting, apparently, nothing but back doors. Indeed, there is no front entrance at all, that I know of. And the Spawer approaches the Royal Arms and orders the Royal Arms to put the kettle on and lay the table for two, with ham and eggs and anything else they think likely to tempt an invalid. And the Royal Arms, which is the austere-faced lady who looked sternly at them on their arrival through the small-paned window of what might be the scullery, after suggesting that he should accompany her to the hen-run and pick his fancy, promised tea faithfully in twenty minutes. She could also promise it in fifteen, if he liked, but not faithfully.
On a backless bench, close by the cliff edge, Pam and the Spawer sat together in blessed community of spirit, and solaced their souls in the blue sea before them. The sun, sinking behind their backs, cast their two shadows far out on to the sands below, above the black silhouette of the cliff. Right out to sea, on the straight, blue line of the horizon, a ship stood up in snowy purity, like an iceberg. Over one corner of the sky a smudge, as though a finger dipped in soot had drawn it across the azure, broad at its base, thinned away to where it joined itself by a fine thread to the funnel of a distant steamer. The chalk cliffs of Farnborough rose up above the water in white marble, and the little alabaster finger of the lighthouse showed clear, like a tiny belemnite.
And after they had spent their twenty minutes in contemplation of the scene and wandered to and fro a little along the trampled margin of the cliff, they retrace their steps and make their way into the tea-room of the Royal Arms.