This letter was written at Eltham, and there was a laughing battle between us over the writing of it. I threatened to make him hang out "Union Jacks" from every window of Avondale if he made things unpleasant in Ireland for the Prince, and he, in pretended horror, wrote the above, and tossed it to me for the alterations (which I, of course, did not make) that my "English prejudices" demanded. But he seriously believed that this visit of the Prince to Ireland was timed by the advisers of his Royal Highness with singular and malicious advertence to the State of the political situation, and he commented most strongly upon the poverty of imagination and chivalry of a great country such as England who could find no better use for her Prince than that of an electioneering agent. {238} CHAPTER XXIII SEASIDE HOLIDAYS "_Green leaves a-floating, Castles of the foam, Boats of mine a-boating, Where will all come home?_" --STEVENSON. In May, 1886, I took my children to the Queen's Hotel, Eastbourne, for a change, and, after a few days spent in looking for lodgings, I settled them in St. John's Road. Parnell enjoyed the bathing at Eastbourne greatly, and was much distressed that the weakness of my heart prevented my joining him in his swims, and that boating had most disastrous effects on me. He was boyishly determined that I should at any rate join him in some way in his sea "sports," and one warm May evening he insisted that if I went into the sea fully dressed it could not hurt me. I thought it would at any rate be most uncomfortable, but to please him I held tightly to his arm while we waded far out to sea till the waves came to my shoulder and threw me off my feet. He held me tightly, laughing aloud as the ripple of waves and wind caught my hair and loosed it about my shoulders; and, as I grew cold and white, my wonderful lover carried me, with all my weight of soaked clothing, back to the shore, kissing the wet hair that the wind twisted about his face and whispering the love that almost frightened me in its strength. Luckily the dusk of evening had come down upon us, and I was able to get back {239} to the house in my wet things, half-walking and half-carried by Parnell, without unduly shocking Eastbourne's conventions. As I thought I should be able to be away from my aunt, with occasional flying visits to her, for about two months, Parnell had two of our horses brought down to Eastbourne. He had during that time to go to London and Ireland, but it was on the whole a peaceful little interlude in his strenuous political life, and we were very happy. He rode his horse President in the morning, and afterwards I drove him far out into the country around Eastbourne with Dictator in my phaeton.