“I never saw a dirty little fishing-village,” said Sheila quietly.

Her husband laughed:  “I meant no offence.  I was not thinking of Borvabost at all.  Well, Ingram, can’t you run down and see us while we are at Brighton?”

“Oh do, Mr. Ingram!” said Sheila with quite a new interest in her face; and she came forward as though she would have gone down on her knees and begged this great favor of him.  “Do, Mr. Ingram!  We should try to amuse you some way, and the weather is sure to be fine.  Shall we keep a room for you?  Can you come on Friday and stay till the Monday?  It is a great difference there will be in the place if you come down.”

Ingram looked at Sheila, and was on the point of promising, when Lavender added, “And we shall introduce you to that young American lady whom you are so anxious to meet.”

“Oh, is she to be there?” he said, looking rather curiously at Lavender.

“Yes, she and her mother.  We are going down together.”

“Then I’ll see whether I can in a day or two,” he said, but in a tone which pretty nearly convinced Sheila that she should not have her stay at Brighton made pleasant by the company of her old friend and associate.

However, the mere anticipation of seeing the sea was much; and when they had got into a cab and were going down to Victoria Station, Sheila’s eyes were filled with a joyful anticipation.  She had discarded altogether the descriptions of Brighton that had been given her.  It is one thing to receive information, and another to reproduce it in an imaginative picture; and in fact her imagination was busy with its own work while she sat and listened to this person or the other speaking of the seaside town she was going to.  When they spoke of promenades and drives and miles of hotels and lodging-houses, she was thinking of the sea-beach and of the boats and of the sky-line with its distant ships.  When they told her of private theatricals and concerts and fancy-dress balls, she was thinking of being out on the open sea, with a light breeze filling the sails, and a curl of white foam rising at the bow and sweeping and hissing down the sides of the boat.  She would go down among the fishermen when her husband and his friends were not by, and talk to them, and get to know what they sold their fish for down here in the South.  She would find out what their nets cost, and if there was anybody in authority to whom they could apply for an advance of a few pounds in case of hard times.  Had they their cuttings of peat free from the nearest moss-land? and did they dress their fields with the thatch that had got saturated with the smoke?  Perhaps some of them could tell her where the crews hailed from that had repeatedly shot the sheep of the Flannen Isles.  All these and a hundred other things she would get to know; and she might procure and send to her father some rare bird or curiosity of the sea, that might be added to the little museum in which she used to sing in days gone by, when he was busy with his pipe and his whisky.