"No," she said, "this is not worth any money, because you can get plenty of them without trouble, and even beautiful things are not considered valuable if anybody can have them. This stone was polished without charge by the action of the waves washing against it for millions and millions of years, and if it--" The sudden blare of a brass band on the other side of the sea-wall made her turn her head, and there, in a brand-new room of a brand-new house on the glaring Promenade, a room radiating blatant prosperity from its stony balcony, she perceived her father, in holiday attire, and by his side a woman, buxom and yellow-haired. A hot wave of blood seemed to flood Salvina up to the eyes. So there he was luxuriating in the sun, rich and careless. All her homely instincts of work and duty rose in burning contempt. And poor Mrs. Brill had to remain cooped at home, drudging and wailing. For a second she felt she would like to throw the stone at him, but her next feeling was pain lest the sight of her should painfully embarrass him; and turning her face swiftly seawards she went on, with scarce a pause perceptible to the little girls, "If it gets worn away some more millions of years, it will be ground down to sand, like all the other stones that were once here," and as she spoke, she began to realize her own words, and a tragic sense of her own insignificance in this eternal wash of space and time seemed to reduce her to a grain of sand, and blow her about the great spaces. But the mood passed away before a fresh upwelling of concrete resentment against the self-pampered pair at the Promenade window. Nevertheless, her feeling of how their seeming satisfaction would be upset at the sight of her, made her carefully minimize the contingency, and the dread of it hovered over the day, adding to the worries over the children. But she vowed that her mother should be revenged; she, too, poor wronged one, should wallow in Promenade luxury in her future holidays; no more should she be housed in back streets without sea-views. At night, after Mrs. Brill was in bed, Salvina could not resist saying to Lazarus, whose supper she had been keeping hot for him: "How strange! Father _is_ at the seaside." "The dickens!" He paused, fork in hand. "You saw him at Clacton-on-Sea?" "Yes, but don't tell mother. So we didn't tell a lie after all. I'm so glad." "Oh, go to blazes, you and your conscience. Where was he staying?" "In a house in the very centre of the Promenade; it's simply shocking!" "Make me some fresh mustard, and don't moralize. Did you have a good time?" "Not very; a little cripple-girl in my class went paddling, and joking, and dropped her crutch, and it floated away--" "Bother your little cripple-girls. They always seem to be in your class!" "Because my class is on the ground floor." "Ha! ha! ha! Just your luck. By the way," he became grave, "look what a beastly letter from Kitty! Not coming to the wedding. I call it awfully selfish of her."