Explanations followed—not embarrassingly deep ones; the moon was left out altogether. The water would come right up to where we were at two o'clock because it was spring-tide. Then it would go back again for the same reason; which seemed inconsistent to Lizarann, who was no politician. But she was not really keen about the physical questions involved. As soon as courtesy permitted, she reintroduced her personal interest.
"When my Daddy was sarving aboardship"—it was funny to hear the child repeat her father's words, said the Mandarin after—"did he seed the water go in and out, like we do?"
"If he was on the coast."
"Are we on the scoast?"
"We are at Chalk Cliff, and Chalk Cliff's on the coast." Lizarann didn't see why we should wash our hands of the coast, and throw the whole responsibility on Chalk Cliff. But she accepted this too; only, further definition would be welcome.
"Those are ships?" she half asked, half affirmed, looking out to sea.
"Those are ships. Some big, some little."
"Are they on the scoast?"
"Oh dear no!—miles away." Then Lizarann was beginning, languidly, a demonstration that her Daddy, when voyaging on board ship, could not also be on the coast and observe the tides, when the Mandarin—good, well-intentioned woman that she was—must needs feel her patient's pulse, and say she mustn't talk too much and make herself cough, and advised her to lie quiet, and even go to sleep. Lizarann repudiated sleep, as she wanted to watch the life around, and was only wishing she hadn't got so tired with that railway-journey yesterday. It would have been so nice to catch prawns and make sand-castles, like the Children. But she acquiesced in inaction, to her own surprise; and to her still greater surprise waked suddenly, shortly after, from a dream of Bridgetticks and her small self building sand-castles in the gutter in Tallack Street, and terribly in dread of the Boys.
Still, through it all, the little patient saw nothing strange in her own readiness to submit to being nursed. She was first and foremost among the disbelievers in the seriousness of her malady, and ascribed all the solicitude that was being shown about her to an epidemic of public benevolence, more or less due to misapprehensions set on foot by Dr. Spiderophel's imperfect auscultations. It was a whim he had inoculated a kind-hearted world with; and she felt, for some reason she could not analyze, that it was easiest to indulge it.