“Oh, father!”
“Well, think of it! Something like forty thousand homeless people stranded over yonder on the beach.”
“I’m glad you haven’t been one of the homeless ones,” she said gently.
“I don’t know how glad you’d be if you saw my one-roomed tent on the boggy tundra.”
“Dearest.” She took off his big soft hat that impeached his dignity with an absurd operatic air, and she stroked the whitened hair. “It’s well I”—she looked across at her lover—“we’ve come to look after you.”
“Oh, I’m one of the fortunate Nomites! I tell you a man with any sort of shelter over his head is in luck. Hundreds are sleeping on the beach in the cold and rain.”
“Silly people not to buy a tent.”
“Most of them did, and can’t get it landed or can’t find it in the hurly-burly.”
“Oh, I hope mine won’t get lost!”
“Yours!”