Little Collett delivered a message of invitation from Selina, begging Mr. Weyburn to accompany her brother on the coach to Harwich next day, and spend two or three days by the sea.  But Weyburn’s mind had been set in the opposite direction—­up Thames instead of down.

He was about to refuse, but he checked his voice and hummed.  Words of Selina’s letter jumped in italics.  He perceived Lady Ormont’s hand.  For one thing, would she be at Great Marlow alone?  And he knew that hand—­how deftly it moved and moved others.  Selina Collett would not have invited him with underlinings merely to see a shoreside house and garden.  Her silence regarding a particular name showed her to be under injunction, one might guess.  At worst, it would be the loss of a couple of days; worth the venture.  They agreed to journey by coach next day.

Facing eastward in the morning, on a seat behind the coachman, Weyburn had a seafaring man beside him, bound for the good port of Harwich, where his family lived, and thence by his own boat to Flushing.  Weyburn set him talking of himself, as the best way of making him happy; for it is the theme which pricks to speech, and so liberates an uncomfortably locked-up stranger; who, if sympathetic to human proximity, is thankful.  They exchanged names, delighted to find they were both Matthews; whereupon Matthew of the sea demanded the paw of Matthew of the land, and there was a squeeze.  The same with little Collett, after hearing of him as the old schoolmate of the established new friend.  Then there was talk.  Little Collett named Felixstowe as the village of his mother’s house and garden sloping to the sands.  ’That ‘s it-you have it,’ said the salted Matthew:  ’peace is in that spot, and there I ’ve sworn to pitch my tent when I ’m incapacitated for further exercise—­profitable, so to speak.  My eldest girl has a bar of amber she picked up one wash of the tide at Felixstowe, and there it had been lying sparkling, unseen, hours, the shore is that solitary.  What I like!—­a quiet shore and a peopled sea.  Ever been to Brighton?  There it ‘s t’ other way.’

Not long after he had mentioned the time of early evening for their entry into his port of Harwich, the coach turned quietly over on a bank of the roadside, depositing outside passengers quite safely, in so matter-of-course a way, that only the screams of an uninjured lady inside repressed their roars of laughter.  One of the wheels had come loose, half a mile off the nearest town.  Their entry into Harwich was thereby delayed until half-past nine at night.  Full of consideration for the new mates now fast wedded to his heart by an accident.  Matthew Shale proposed to Matthew Weyburn, instead of the bother of crossing the ferry with a portmanteau and a bag at that late hour, to sup at his house, try the neighbouring inn for a short sleep, and ship on board his yawl, the honest Susan, to be rowed ashore off the Swin to Felixstowe sands no later than six o’clock of a summer’s morning, in time for a bath and a swim before breakfast.  It sounded well—­it sounded sweetly.  Weyburn suggested the counter proposal of supper for the three at the inn.  But the other Matthew said:  ’I married a cook.  She expects a big appetite, and she always keeps warm when I ’m held away, no matter how late.  Sure to be enough.’