“But Miss Lentaigne said she’d expect us. If we stay out she won’t like it.”
“Let her dis.,” said Priscilla. “Now what do you want to drink? I always have lemon flavoured soda. It’s less sticky than regular lemonade. Stone ginger beer is better than either, of course, but Brannigan doesn’t keep it, I can’t imagine why not.”
“If we’re going to stay out,” said Frank, “I’ll have beer, lager for choice.”
“Right. Lager is twopence. Lemon flavoured soda twopence if we bring back the bottles. That will leave fourpence for biscuits which ought to be enough.”
Fourpence worth of biscuits seemed to Frank an insufficient supply of food for two people who are to be on the sea for the whole day. He saw, besides, an opportunity of asserting once for all his position of superiority. He made up his mind to tip Priscilla. He fumbled in his pocket for a coin.
“You get quite a lot of biscuits for fourpence,” said Priscilla, “if you go in for plain arrowroot. Of course they’re rather dull, but then you get very few of the better sorts. Take macaroons, for instance. They’re nearly a halfpenny each in Brannigan’s. Sheer robbery, I call it.”
Frank, determined to do the thing handsomely if he did it at all, passed half a crown to Priscilla over the back of the bath chair.
“My dear child,” he said, “buy macaroons by all means if you like them. Buy as many as you want.”
Priscilla received the half-crown without any appearance of shame.
“If you’re prepared to lash out money in that way,” she said, “we may as well have a tongue. Brannigan has small ones at one and sixpence. Brawn of course is cheaper, but then if you have brawn you want a tin-opener. The tongues are in glass jars which you can break with a stone or a rowlock. The lids are supposed to come off quite easily if you jab a knife through them, but they don’t really. All that happens is a sort of fizz of air and the lid sticks on as tight as ever. Things hardly ever do what they’re supposed to according to science, which makes me think that science is rather rot, though, of course, it may have its uses only that I don’t know them.”