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“Yer doan’t mean thart?”

“Doan’t I? Yer’ll answer fer me in everything, ‘t seems. But yer’ve got enough ter answer fer yerself, Jack Curtice. I’m none of the sort ter go or stay at anny mahn’s pleasure. There’s kerps and dabs in the sea yet, Jack Curtice; and fatter ones ter fish fer, too.”

“But yer doan’t understand.”

“I understand my own vally; and that isn’t ter be kep’ drarging my toes on the Parade half an a’rtenoon fer a chap as thinks he be better engaged summer else.”

“And yer gone ter break wi’ me fer thart?”

“Good-bye, Mr. Curtice,” she said, and jerked her nose high and walked off.

Now here was an inconsistent jade, and I felt sorry and relieved for the sake of the young fellow.

He stood, after the manner of his kind, amazed and speechless. Man’s saving faculty of logic was in him, but tongue-tied; and he could not express his intuitive recognition of the self-contradictory. Such natures frequently make reason articulate through a blow–a rough way of knocking her into shape, but commonly effectual. Jack, however, was evidently a large gentle swain of the dumb-suffering type–one of those unresisting leviathans of good-humour, upon whom a woman loves to vent that passion of the illogical which an antipathetic sex has vainly tried to laugh her out of conceit with.

I peered a little longer, and presently saw Mr. Curtice walk off in a state compound of bewilderment and abject depression.

This was the beginning to me of an interest apart from that which had brought me to King’s Cobb. A real nutshell drama had usurped the place of that fictitious one that had as yet failed to mark an epoch by so much as a scratch. I accepted the former as some solace for the intolerable wrong inflicted upon me by the sea and Miss Whiffle.

I happened across my unconscious friends fairly frequently after that my first introduction to them; so often, indeed, that, judged by what followed, it would almost seem as if Fate, desiring record of an incident in the lives of these two, had intentionally worked to discomfit me from a task more engrossing.

Apart, and judged on their natural merits, I took Jack for a good stolid fellow, innately and a little aggravatingly virtuous, and perhaps a trifle more just than generous.

Jenny, I felt, had the spurious brilliancy of that division of her sex that claims as intuition an inability to master the processes of thought, and attributes to this faculty all fortunate conclusions, but none that is faulty. I thought, with some commiseration for him, that at bottom her manner showed some real leaning towards the lover she had discarded–that she felt the need of a pincushion, as it were, into which to stick the little points of her malevolence. I think I was inclined to be hard on her. I have felt the same antagonism many times towards beauty that was unattainable by me. For she was richly pretty, without doubt.

When in the neighbourhood of one another, however, they were wont to assume an elaborate artificiality of speech and manner in communion with their friends, that was designed with each to point the moral of a complete indifference and forgetfulness. But the girl was by far the better actor; and not only did she play her own part convincingly, but she generally managed to show up in her rival that sense of mortification that it was his fond hope he was effectually concealing.

A fortnight passed; and, lo! there came the end of the lovers’ quarrel in all dramatic appropriateness.

By that time the doings of Jack and Jenny had come to be my mind’s only refuge from such a vacancy of outlook as I had never before experienced. “All down the coast,” that summer, “the languid air did swoon.” The earth broiled, and very thought perspired; and Miss Whiffle’s voice was like a steam-whistle.

One day, as I was exhaustedly trifling with my meridian meal, and balancing the gratification against the trouble of eating lumpy tapioca pudding, a muffled, rolling thud broke upon my ears, making the window and floor vibrate slightly. It seemed so distant and unimportant that I took no notice of it; and it was only when, ten minutes later, I became aware that certain excited townsfolk were scurrying past outside that I roused slowly to the thought that here was something unusual toward. Then, indeed, a sort of insane abandon flashed into life in me, and I leapt to my feet with maniac eyes. Something stirring in King’s Cobb! I should have thought nothing less than the last trump could have pricked it out of its accustomed grooves; and that even then it would have slipped back into them with a sluggish sense of grievance after the first flourish.