“No, gout.”
“More or less the same thing,” said Priscilla. “Of course, if that’s what she’s at, she’s not a spy, and we oughtn’t to go on treating her as if she was. I don’t think it’s right to suspect people of really bad crimes unless one knows. Do you, Cousin Frank?”
“Of course not. All the same, the way she’s going on is rather queer. She’s just put something that she picked up into that tin box she has slung across her back. That doesn’t look to me as if she had gout.”
“If only Jimmy Kinsella would turn this way,” said Priscilla, “I’d wave at him and make him come over here. It’s perfectly maddening being stuck like this when such a lot of exciting things are going on. What time is it?”
“A little after two.”
“It’s low water then,” said Priscilla. “From this on the tide will be coming in again.”
The Tortoise lay on the top of a grey bank from which the water had entirely receded. Between her and the channel, now a tangle of floating weed, lay a broad stretch of mud, dotted over with large stones and patches of gravel. The wind, which had been veering round to the south since twelve o’clock, had almost entirely died away. The sun shone very warmly. The Tortoise, lying sadly on her side, afforded no shelter at all. Both the beer and the lemonade were finished.
Priscilla drank some peach juice from the tin.