CHAPTER I.
The Baron and Mr Bunker walked arm-in-arm along the esplanade at St Egbert’s-on-Sea.
“Aha!” said the Baron, “zis is more fresh zan London!”
“Yes,” replied his friend; “we are now in the presence of that stimulating element which provides patriotic Britons with music-hall songs, and dyspeptic Britons with an appetite.”
A stirring breeze swept down the long white esplanade, threatening hats and troubling skirts; the pale-green south-coast sea rumbled up the shingle; the day was bright and pleasant for the time of year, and drove the Baron’s mischances from his head; altogether it seemed to Mr Bunker that the omens were good. They were both dressed in the smartest of tweed suits, and walked jauntily, like men who knew their own value. Every now and then, as they passed a pretty face, the Baron would say, “Aha, Bonker! zat is not so bad, eh?”
And Mr Bunker, who seemed not unwilling that his friend should find some entertaining distraction in St Egbert’s, would look at the owners of these faces with a prospector’s eye and his own unrivalled assurance.
They had walked up and down three or four times, when a desire for a different species of diversion began to overtake the Baron. It was the one kind of desire that the Baron never even tried to wrestle with.
“My vriend Bonker,” said he, “is it not somevere about time for loncheon, eh?”
“I should say it was precisely the hour.”
“Ha, ha! zen, let us gom and eat. Himmel, zis sea is ze fellow to make von hungry!”