"Who are they, and what do they want?"
"It's all them folks he let the house to, and they've got 'im——"
And as we made for the shore, Amelia, who was a very modest girl, fled precipitately up the slope.
"Hey, Milly!" I shouted, "bring us down a couple of those big bath towels."
"'THEY WANT YOU UP THERE,' SHE PANTED."
Amelia made no answer, but presently the big bath-towels met us under the arms of a small boy. We twisted our ordinary towels apron-wise over our dripping bathing-suits, and draped the big bath-towels gracefully over our shoulders, and then stalked as majestically as circumstances permitted towards the noisy crowd, which resolved itself into its component elements as we drew near.
The outer fringe consisted of excited and irrepressible small boys of the town, who scampered round and round, shouting and dancing, and cuffing one another, in sheer enjoyment of living and the knowledge that something unusual was on foot. Inside them stood a number of the town loafers, all facing in towards the centre of the ring, and laughing and making jocular remarks to one another. Closer in still, came an excited circle of our friends who, like the old ladies, ought to have been living in the cottage, but were not. The irascible old gentleman was there, purple in the face and swearing frightfully; the solicitor was there, with a slightly anticipatory look in his face; the Strong Man was there, and looked as if he wanted to break something; and closer in than all these, forming a solid bodyguard of white flannels and laughing faces and briar pipes, were our young friends from Oxford.
The three little old ladies, with their pugs in their arms, crept round the revolving outskirts of the crowd, and joined my wife, who stood wondering in the doorway, and began timidly questioning her as to the meaning of the uproar.
Mr. Sawyer and I elbowed our way through the crowd, and the bodyguard opened to let us into the circle.
In the centre stood a little, trembling meek, brown-eyed, crooked man.