'Perhaps . . . hulloa, there are the kiddies.' He ran off down the steps from the front. A minute after Victoria saw him helping the elder girl to bury her little sister in the sand.
Victoria felt much reassured. He was normal again, the half wistful, half irresponsible boy she had once known. He slept well, laughed, and his crying need for her seemed to have abated. At the end of the fortnight Victoria was debating whether she should take him home. She was in the hotel garden talking to the smaller girl, telling her a wonderful story about the fairy who lived in the telephone and said ping-pong when the line was engaged. The little girl sat upon her knee; when she laughed Victoria's heart bounded. The elder girl came through the gate leading a good-looking young woman in white by the hand.
'Oh, mummie, here's auntie,' cried the child, dragging her mother up to Victoria. The two women looked at one another.
'They tell me you have been very kind . . .' said the woman. Then she stopped abruptly.
'Of course, mummie, she's not really our auntie,' said the child confidentially.
Victoria put the small girl down. The mother looked at her again. She seemed so nice and refined . . . yet her husband said that the initials on the trunks were different . . . one had to be careful.
'Come here, Celia,' she said sharply. 'Thank you,' she added to Victoria. Then taking her little girls by the hand she took them away.
Jack willingly left Broadstairs that afternoon when Victoria explained that she was tired and that something had made her low-spirited.
'Right oh,' he said. 'Let's go back to town. I want to see Amershams and find out how those sonnets have sold.'
He then left her to wire to Augusta.