"Well, Jeremiah, and what have you got to say for yourself?" said the merpussy soon after, just out of her machine, with a huge mass of briny black hair spread out to dry. The tails had to be split and sorted and shaken out at intervals to give the air a chance. Sally was blue and sticky all over, and her finger-tips and nails all one colour. But her spirits were boisterous.
"What about?"
"What about, indeed? About not coming into the water to be pulled out. You promised you would, you know you did!"
"I did; but subject to a reasonable interpretation of the compact. I should have been out of my depth ever so long before you could reach me. Why didn't you come closer?"
"How could I, with a fat, pink party drying himself next door? You wouldn't have, if it had been you, and him Goody Vereker...."
"Sal-ly! Darling!" Her mother remonstrates.
"We-ell, there's nothing in that! As if we didn't all know what the Goody would look like...."
Rosalind is really afraid that the strict mamma of her husband's recent incubus will overhear, and sit at another breakwater next day. "Come along!" she says, dispersively and emphatically. "We shall have the shoulder of mutton spoiled."
"No, we shan't! Shall we, Jeremiah? We've talked it over, me and Jeremiah. Haven't we, Gaffer Fenwick?" She is splitting up the salt congestions of his mane as she sits by him on the shingle. He confirms her statement.
"We have. And we have decided that if we are two hours late