"I shall get there," she thought, "about as soon as it does, but it looks better to write."
Before the letter was finished, Phoebe was nearly as angry as the shop-girl; but at last, with exactly two cents with which to buy a stamp, she departed for the post-office.
"The stingy old thing!" she said to herself as she left the shop; "not a cent for myself, and makes me walk all the way out to that Cobhurst, too! I see what that old woman is up to. She's afraid he'll marry the young lady what's out thar, an' she wants him to marry Miss Dora, an' git a lot of the Bannister money to fix up his old house, an' then she expects to go out thar an' board with 'em, for I reckon she's gittin' mighty tired of the way them Wittons live. She's always patchin' up marriages so she can go an' live with the people when they first begins housekeepin', an' things is bran-new an' fresh. She did that with young Mr. Witton, but their furniture is gittin' pretty old an' worn out now. If she tries it with Mr. Hav'ley an' Dora Bannister, I reckon she'll make as big a botch of it as she did with Mike an' me."
CHAPTER XXXVI
A CRY FROM THE SEA
Miss Panney left Thorbury the next morning, but she had to go without seeing Phoebe, who did not appear at the station. She arrived at Barport in the afternoon, and went directly to the house of the friend to whom she had written, and who, it is to be hoped, was glad to see her. She deferred making her presence known to the Bannister party until the next morning. When she called at their hotel about ten o'clock, she was informed that they had all gone down to the beach; and as they could not be expected to return very soon, Miss Panney betook herself to the ocean's edge to look for them.
She found a wide stretch of sand crowded with bathers and spectators. It had been a long time since she had visited the seashore, and she discovered that seaside customs and costumes had changed very much. She was surprised, amused, and at times indignant; but, as she had come to look for the Bannisters, she confined herself to that business, postponing reflections and judgments.
Her search proved to be a difficult one. She walked up and down the beach until she assured herself that the Bannisters and Miriam were not among those who had come as lookers-on, or merely to breathe the salt air and enjoy the ocean view. When she came to scrutinize the bathers, whether they were disporting themselves in the sea or standing or lying about on the sand, she found it would be almost impossible to recognize anybody in that motley crowd.
"I can scarcely make out," she said to herself, "whether they are men or women, much less whether I know them or not. But if the Bannisters and Miriam are among those water-monkeys, I shall know them when I see their faces, and then I shall take the first chance I get to tell them what I think of them."
It was not long before Miss Panney began to grow tired. She was not used to trudging through soft sand, and she had walked a good deal before she reached the beach. She concluded, therefore, to look for a place where she might sit down and rest, and if her friends did not show themselves in a reasonable time she would go back to their hotel and wait for them there; but she saw no chairs nor benches, and as for imitating the hundreds of well-dressed people who were sitting down in the dirt,—for to Miss Panney sand was as much dirt as any other pulverized portion of the earth's surface,—she had never done such a thing, and she did not intend to.