One morning I stood and watched them leaning over the wooden rail of the
quay. Everybody leans there in the mornings, it's fashionable, and if
you lean a little forward or backward you can either see or not be seen
by the person who is hanging over it a few yards further on. The boats
were as usual unloading their big haul of herrings, and the sleepy-eyed
sailors (they have been up all night!) were sitting smoking lazily on
the edges of the boats. Lady Scilly was in white linen, so awfully pure
and angelic-looking that the little boys dabbed her with fish-scales as
they passed her. She was talking to Simon about money earnestly, and
took no notice. She was telling him that Lord Scilly likes money so much
that he didn't ever like to let it out of his hands. What business of
Simon Hermyre's is it, I should like to know, what Lord Scilly chooses
to do with his money? Everybody seems to think Simon is going to be
rich, because he is the son of Sir Frederick Hermyre, but that is no
criterion. He always seems to have plenty of pocket-money, but I still
think it mean of a full-grown woman to borrow money of a boy.
"Do let me have the pleasure," he kept saying, and "Do let me!" and
goodness knows why, for she seemed to be in no hurry to prevent him! I
suppose it is why people like Simon so much, that he always seems to be
trying to do what they want in spite of themselves.
"Then that is settled, thank the Lord!" I heard him say at last. (My
sailor buffer between me and her had begun to talk to a man below, and
rather drowned their conversation.) "Just look at that sheet of silver
on the floor of the boat--all one night's haul! Suppose it was shillings
and half-crowns?"
"Yes, only suppose! And the sailors treading carelessly about in it, as
you might in the train of one of my silver-embroidered dresses! It is
very like a full court-train, isn't it, the one you are going to have
the privilege of paying for?"
Simon said yes it was, but he didn't seem to like her quite so much as
he did since she gave in and let him pay her bill. He seemed to have
grown a little bit older all of a sudden, he had a sort of aged, pinched
look come over his face.
Then I saw, I positively saw, the thought of my sister Ariadne come
there and make him handsome and boyish again, and I wriggled past my
sailor and came round behind her and said, "How do you do?"
Lady Scilly having done with Simon for the moment, left him and went to
speak to Mr. Sidney Robinson and George, who had just come up from their
bathe.
"How is your sister?" Simon asked me.
"Very well, thank you--at least I mean not very well----"
"I don't wonder. I was so sorry for her the other night."
"Did you loathe her? Your face looked as if you did."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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