"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 it may be done enough. But that in any case the so-called gravy will be grey hot water." "Get up and come along, and don't be a mad kitten! I shall go and leave you two behind. So now you know." And Rosalind goes away up the shingle. "What makes mother look so serious sometimes, kitten? She did just now." "She's jealous of you and me flirting like we do. Don't put your hat on; let the sun dry you up a bit. Does she really look serious though? Do you mean it?" "Yes, I mean it. It comes and goes. But when I ask her she only laughs at me." A painful thought crosses Sally's mind. Is it possible that some of her reckless escapades have _froisse_'d her mother? She goes off into a moment's contemplation, then suddenly jumps up with, "Come along, Jeremiah," and follows her up the beach. But the gravity on the face of the latter, by now half-way to the house, had nothing to do with any of Sally's shocking vulgarities and outrageous utterances. No, nor even with the green-eyed monster Jealousy her unscrupulous effrontery had not hesitated to impute. She allowed it to dominate her expression, as there was no one there to see, until the girl overtook her. Then she wrenched her face and her thoughts apart with a smile. "You _are_ a mad little goose," said she. But the thing that weighted her mind--oppressed or puzzled her, as might be--what was it?