“Thanks, old cock, any extra charge?” said the tourist. It was of course all the fault of those old trousers and linen coat, and I have heard that Sir Frederick was not so very angry, and stood the man a glass of beer. He is a Liberal in spite of owning land. Simon is a Conservative. Eldest sons are always different politics to their fathers. We never see the old man hardly except on these stormy pier parties, and then he stalks up and down the pier with his daughter among us all, and though he isn’t exactly rude to anybody, he never seems to hear or care to hear what anybody is saying. Blood tells. Lady Scilly has given him up in disgust long ago; he simply answered her straight as long as he could, and when he didn’t understand her, he just shook his head and grinned and turned away.
Simon stood by, looking rather like a little whipped dog. He is awfully afraid of his father, who isn’t proud of him, but of Almeria, who he says has got all the brains of the family, and ought to have been the boy.
Simon tried introducing Ariadne to Almeria, but Ariadne’s fringe proved an insuperable barrier. As for Ariadne, Almeria’s naked forehead made her feel quite shy, she said, such a double-bedded kind of forehead as that needed covering. I said, all the same, she was an idiot not to make friends with Simon’s sister, for he had obviously a great respect for the girl’s opinion. She might have plenty of sense in spite of her bald forehead and clumpers of boots! But it was no use, they stood glaring at each other like two Highland cattle, while Simon was trying to invent a mutual bond between them.
“My sister writes a little,” he said.
“Only for nothing in the Parish Magazine,” said Almeria, witheringly.
—“And goes about,” he went on, “with a hammer collecting——”
“Bedlamites and Amorites,” said I, to make them laugh.
They didn’t laugh, and Simon continued—
“And pebbling and mossing and growing sea anemones in basins.”
Then I got excited, and as Ariadne stood mum, I supported the conversation.