Harriet, of course, was enraptured, and declared she could not be happy till she had lived beside the Pacific. They bought food and ate it by the sea. Then Harriet was chilled, so they went to a restaurant for a cup of soup. When they were again in the street Harriet realised that she hadn’t got her yellow scarf: her big, silky yellow scarf that was so warm and lovely. She declared she had left it in the eating-house, and they went back at once for it. The girls in the eating-house--the waitresses--said, in their cheeky Cockney Australian that they “hedn’t seen it,” and that the “next people who kyme arfter must ’ev tyken it.” Anyhow, it was gone--and Harriet furious, feeling as if there had been a thief in the night. In this unhappy state of affairs Somers suggested they should sit on the tram-car and go somewhere. They sat on the tram-car and ran for miles along a coast with ragged bush loused over with thousands of small promiscuous bungalows, built of everything from patchwork of kerosene tin up to fine red brick and stucco, like Margate. Not far off the Pacific boomed. But fifty yards inland started these bits of swamp, and endless promiscuity of “cottages.” The tram took them five or six miles, to the terminus. This was the end of everywhere, with new “stores”--that is, fly-blown shops with corrugated iron roofs--and with a tram-shelter, and little house-agents’ booths plastered with signs--and more “cottages”; that is, bungalows of corrugated iron or brick--and bits of swamp or “lagoon” where the sea had got in and couldn’t get out. The happy couple had a drink of sticky ærated waters in one of the “stores,” then walked up a wide sand-road dotted on either side with small bungalows, beyond the backs of which lay a whole aura of rusty tin cans chucked out over the back fence. They came to the ridge of sand, and again the pure, long-rolling Pacific. “I love the sea,” said Harriet. “I wish,” said Lovat, “it would send a wave about fifty feet high round the whole coast of Australia.” “You are so bad-tempered,” said Harriet. “Why don’t you see the lovely things!” “I do, by contrast.” So they sat on the sands, and he peeled pears and buried the peel in the yellow sand. It was winter, and the shore was almost deserted. But the sun was warm as an English May.