They had the
most exciting meal in the restaurant that Annie had ever had; also the
most expensive; the price of it indeed staggered her; still, William
Henry did not appear to mind that one meal should exceed the cost of two
days living in Birches Street. Then they went up into the market-place
again, and lo! the market-place had somehow of itself got into the
middle of the sea!
Before the end of the voyage they had tea at threepence a cup. Annie
reflected that the best "Home and Colonial" tea cost eighteenpence a
pound, and that a pound would make two hundred and twenty cups.
Similarly with the bread and butter which they ate, and the jam! But it
was glorious. Not the jam (which Annie could have bettered), but life!
Particularly as the sea was smooth! Presently she descried a piece of
chalk sticking up against the horizon, and it was Douglas lighthouse.
III
There followed six days of delirium, six days of the largest conceivable
existence. The holiday-makers stopped in a superb boarding-house on the
promenade, one of about a thousand superb boarding-houses. The day's
proceedings began at nine o'clock with a regal breakfast, partaken of at
a very long table which ran into a bow window.
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