The substitute was her everyday sun-bonnet, which had been lying on the floor by the press. It was also of pale pink, with spots on its print like little shells on a big scallop. When she had tossed it over her black curls, leaving the strings to fall on her bosom, she could not help but laugh aloud. After all, she was dressed exactly the same as on other days of life, except Sunday, only smarter, perhaps, and fresher maybe. The sun-bonnet was right though, and she began to play with it. It was so full of play; it lent itself to so many moods. It could speak; it could say anything. She poked it to a point, as girls do when the sun is hot, by closing its mouth over the tip of her nose, leaving only a slumberous dark cave visible, through which her black eyes gleamed and her eyelashes shone. She tied the strings under her chin, and tipped the bonnet back on to her neck, as girls will when the breeze is cool, leaving her hair uncovered, her mouth twitching merrily, and her head like a nymph-head in an aureole. She took it off and tossed it on her arm, the strings still knotted, swinging it like a basket, then wafting it like a fan, and walking as she did so to and fro in the room, the floor creaking, her print frock crinkling, and she herself laughing with the thrill of passion vibrating and of imagined things to come. Then she went downstairs with a firm and buoyant step, her fresh lithe figure aglow with young blood and bounding health. At the gate of the “haggard” she met Nancy Joe coming out of the washhouse. “Lord save us alive!” exclaimed Nancy. “If I ever wanted to be a man until this day!” Kate kissed and hugged her, then fled away to the Melliah field. XXI. Philip, in Douglas, had received the following communication from Government House:-- “His Excellency will be obliged to Mr. Philip Christian if he will not leave the island for the present without acquainting him of his destination.” The message was a simple one: it said little, and involved and foreshadowed nothing, but it threw Philip into a condition of great excitement. To relieve his restlessness by giving way to it, he went out to walk. It was the end of the tourist season, and the _Ben-my-Chree_ was leaving the harbour. Newsboys, burrowing among the crowds on the pier to sell a Manx evening paper, were crying, “Illness of the Deemster--serious reports.” Philip's hair seemed to rise from his head. The two things came together in his mind. With an effort to smudge out the connection he turned back to his lodgings, looking at everything that his eyes fell on in the rattling streets, speaking to everybody he knew, but seeing nothing and hearing nobody. The beast of life had laid its claws on him.