of the sea-side, Lesbia was almost sorry when the excursion came to an end, and they reached Bude again, the second week in October.
The time was now about up during which she thought it well to accept the Whytes’ hospitality; but as the 13th of October, her sixteenth birthday, was at hand, Mrs Whyte made her promise to stay over that day. Meanwhile, the excitement of seeing new places had decidedly done her good, it had shaken her out of those unusual fits of abstraction and melancholy, and she did not feel that nervous anxiety to get home to her mother which she had expected to do as the time came near.
Although Mr Whyte had not talked politics much to Lesbia since they left London, he was a keen newspaper reader when there was anything stirring. He took in the Daily Twaddler from a news-agent at the Stratton railway station, and if there was one thing which annoyed him more than another, it was when the paper did not come punctually. This vexation he happened to have on the afternoon of Saturday the 11th of October, and Lesbia at once offered to run into the country town on her machine to see about the delayed paper. But as this would have stood in the way of a little promenade they were to take to where the great swell of the spring tide was rolling in upon the rocks, Mr Whyte said No, he could very well wait till the next or even Monday morning—‘although,’ he added ‘it is provoking to have one’s news stopped just when it’s uncertain what may happen any day with this mad and wicked war against half the world.’
Sunday the 12th came, a calm day as to the weather, but a gloomy and fearsome one in the political atmosphere; for a report had reached Bude late on Saturday night, that the allied forces of the enemy were threatening a descent upon Ireland; and Sunday morning’s gossip swelled the rumour
