"I aren't--I'm not living servant with her," said Caroline sharply. "Who's been telling you that? I simply went to light the fire for them in the morning and do a few odd jobs until they could get somebody permanent." "But I always understood from Mrs. Creddle you were going to be servant there," persisted the woman. "She once told me your aunt Ellen promised years ago." "Very likely she did," said Caroline. "I can't help that. Everybody must do the best they can for themselves." "Well, you're right there," answered the woman, and saying Amen thus to the creed of her day, she took up her basket and went through the turnstile. _Chapter VII_ _Sea-Roke_ One afternoon at the turn of the tide, a sort of transformation scene took place along the sands and on the promenade; a bank of cold vapour advanced from the sea, through which the sun glimmered faintly yellow, then disappeared. The girls' thin blouses began to flap limply against their chilled arms; matrons turned a little red or blue about the nose; children's hair either curled more tightly or hung limp, while their cheeks took on a lovely colour in the cool dampness; tiny beads of moisture hung on everybody's eyelashes. Those who had come out to the seaside from the hot streets of Flodmouth felt when they emerged from the railway station, as if they were plunging into a cold vapour bath. When Caroline went to relieve her colleague Lillie at tea-time, she was met by a stream of nurses, protesting infants and middle-aged women on their way home. And as the men who had just arrived from a day's business in the city made straight for their lodgings, Thorhaven in the very midst of the season took on an air of exclusion--of remoteness. You could notice the wash of the waves again now. The mist crept steadily along inland, muffling the church, the trees beyond--almost hiding the privet hedge from Miss Ethel as she glanced out of the window. "A heavy roke. I hope it won't last," she said; but she was not really thinking of what she was saying because her attention was engrossed by the noises on the other side of the hedge. Never the same continuously, but always changing, so that the ear never became dulled by knowing what to expect. A sharply whistled tune. Voices. The knock, knock, knock of a tool on a hard substance. A sound of scraping. Then blessed silence for a few seconds. Then knock, knock, knock again. She turned impatiently to Mrs. Bradford, who sat close up to the window reading the paper. "Thank goodness, it is nearly five; the men will be gone directly." "You should try to get used to it," said Mrs. Bradford. "You have let it get on your nerves." And she returned at once to the newspaper in which she was reading a minutely-reported divorce case; for though a stolid and intensely respectable woman she loved to read these reports. "It is plain to see that the husband wants to get rid of his wife," she said after a while.