disputed over the signs of her favour, and the next Sunday they went

there again.

But she had vanished, and a mother of forbidding aspect afforded no

explanations.

If Platt and Parsons and Mr. Polly live to be a hundred, they will

none of them forget that girl as she stood with a pink flush upon her,

faintly smiling and yet earnest, parting the branches of the hedgerows

and reaching down apple in hand. Which of them was it, had caught her

spirit to attend to them?...

And once they went along the coast, following it as closely as

possible, and so came at last to Foxbourne, that easternmost suburb of

Brayling and Hampsted-on-the-Sea.

Foxbourne seemed a very jolly little place to Mr. Polly that

afternoon. It has a clean sandy beach instead of the mud and pebbles

and coaly défilements of Port Burdock, a row of six bathing

machines, and a shelter on the parade in which the Three Ps sat after

a satisfying but rather expensive lunch that had included celery. Rows

of verandahed villas proffered apartments, they had feasted in an

hotel with a porch painted white and gay with geraniums above, and the

High Street with the old church at the head had been full of an

agreeable afternoon stillness.

The History of Mr Polly