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in giggling bunches. They could tell the people who had
come down from London for the day; the keen air gave a fil-
lip to their weariness. There were many Jews, stout ladies in
tight satin dresses and diamonds, little corpulent men with
a gesticulative manner. There were middle-aged gentlemen
spending a week-end in one of the large hotels, carefully
dressed; and they walked industriously after too substantial
a breakfast to give themselves an appetite for too substan-
tial a luncheon: they exchanged the time of day with friends
and talked of Dr. Brighton or London-by-the-Sea. Here and
there a well-known actor passed, elaborately unconscious of
the attention he excited: sometimes he wore patent leather
boots, a coat with an astrakhan collar, and carried a silver-
knobbed stick; and sometimes, looking as though he had
come from a day’s shooting, he strolled in knickerbockers,
and ulster of Harris tweed, and a tweed hat on the back of
his head. The sun shone on the blue sea, and the blue sea
was trim and neat.
After luncheon they went to Hove to see the woman who
was to take charge of the baby. She lived in a small house in
a back street, but it was clean and tidy. Her name was Mrs.
Harding. She was an elderly, stout person, with gray hair
and a red, fleshy face. She looked motherly in her cap, and
Philip thought she seemed kind.
‘Won’t you find it an awful nuisance to look after a baby?’
he asked her.
She explained that her husband was a curate, a good deal
older than herself, who had difficulty in getting perma-
nent work since vicars wanted young men to assist them; he