summer holidays. The morning after I got home I took a towel and bathing drawers and went down to the beach. The sky was unclouded and the air hot and bright, but the North Sea gave it a pleasant tang so that it was a delight just to live and breathe. In winter the natives of Blackstable walked down the empty street with a hurried gait, screwing themselves up in order to expose as little surface as possible to the bitterness of the east wind, but now they dawdled; they stood about in groups in the space between the Duke of Kent and the Bear and Key. You heard a hum of their East Anglian speech, drawling a little with an accent that may be ugly, but in which from old association I still find a leisurely charm. They were fresh-complexioned, with blue eyes and high cheek bones, and their hair was light. They had a clean, honest, and ingenuous look. I do not think they were very intelligent, but they were guileless. They looked healthy, and though not tall for the most part were strong and active. There was little wheeled traffic in Blackstable in those days and the groups that stood about the road chatting seldom had to move for anything but the doctor’s dogcart or the baker’s trap.
Passing the bank, I called in to say how-do-you-do to the manager, who was my uncle’s churchwarden, and when I came out met my uncle’s curate. He stopped and shook hands with me. He was walking with a stranger. He did not introduce me to him. He was a smallish man with a beard and he was dressed rather loudly in a bright brown knickerbocker suit, the breeches very tight, with navy blue stockings, black boots, and a billycock hat. Knickerbockers were uncommon then, at least in Blackstable, and being young and fresh from school I immediately set the fellow down as a cad. But while I chatted with the curate he looked at me in a friendly way, with a smile in his pale blue eyes. I felt that for two pins he would have joined in the conversation and I assumed a haughty demeanour. I was not going to run the risk of being spoken to by a chap who wore knickerbockers like a gamekeeper and I resented the familiarity of his good-humoured expression. I was myself faultlessly dressed in white flannel trousers, a blue blazer with the arms of my school on the breast pocket, and a black-and-white straw hat with a very wide brim. The curate said that he must be getting on (fortunately, for I never knew how to break away from a meeting in the street and would endure agonies of shyness while I looked in vain for an opportunity), but said that he would be coming up to the vicarage that afternoon and would I tell my uncle. The stranger nodded and smiled as we parted, but I gave him a stony stare. I supposed he was a summer visitor and in Blackstable we did not mix with the summer visitors. We thought London people vulgar. We said it was horrid to have all that rag- tag and bobtail down from town every year, but of course it was all right for the tradespeople. Even they, however, gave a faint sigh of relief when September came to an end and Blackstable sank back into its usual peace.
When I went home to dinner, my hair insufficiently dried and clinging lankily to my head, I remarked that I had met the curate and he was coming up that afternoon.
“Old Mrs. Shepherd died last night,” said my uncle in explanation.
The curate’s name was Galloway; he was a tall thin ungainly man with untidy black hair and a small sallow dark face. I suppose he was quite young, but to me he seemed middle-aged. He talked very quickly and gesticulated a great deal. This made people think him rather queer and my uncle would not have kept him but that he was very energetic, and my uncle, being extremely lazy, was glad to have someone to take so much work off his shoulders. After he had finished the business that had brought him to the vicarage Mr. Galloway came in to say how do-you-do to my aunt and she asked him to stay to tea.
“Who was that you were with this morning?” I asked him as he sat down.
“Oh, that was Edward Driffield. I didn’t introduce him. I wasn’t sure if your uncle would wish you to know him.”
“I think it would be most undesirable,” said my uncle.
“Why, who is he? He’s not a Blackstable man, is he?”
“He was born in the parish,” said my uncle. “His father was old Miss Wolfe’s bailiff at Ferne Court. But they were chapel people.”
“He married a Blackstable girl,” said Mr. Galloway.
“In church, I believe,” said my aunt. “Is it true that she was a barmaid at the Railway Arms?”
“She looks as if she might have been something like that,” said Mr. Galloway, with a smile.
“Are they going to stay long?”
“Yes, I think so. They’ve taken one of those houses in that street where the Congregational chapel is,” said the curate.
At that time in Blackstable, though the new streets doubtless had names, nobody knew or used them.
“Is he coming to church?” asked my uncle.
“I haven’t actually talked to him about it yet,” answered Mr. Galloway. “He’s quite an educated man, you know.”
“I can hardly believe that,” said my uncle.
“He was at Haversham School, I understand, and he got any number of scholarships and prizes. He got a scholarship at Wadham, but he ran away to sea instead.”
“I’d heard he was rather a harum-scarum,” said my uncle.
“He doesn’t look much like a sailor,” I remarked.
“Oh, he gave up the sea many years ago. He’s been all sorts of things since then.”
“Jack of all trades and master of none,” said my uncle.
“Now, I understand, he’s a writer.”
“That won’t last long,” said my uncle.
I had never known a writer before; I was interested.
“What does he write?” I asked. “Books?”
“I believe so,” said the curate, “and articles. He had a novel published last spring. He’s promised to lend it me.”
“I wouldn’t waste my time on rubbish in your place,” said my uncle, who never read anything but the
