Publisher's Synopsis
"So of course," wrote Betty Flanders, pressing her heels rather deeper in the sand, "therewas nothing for it but to leave."Slowly welling from the point of her gold nib, pale blue ink dissolved the full stop; for thereher pen stuck; her eyes fixed, and tears slowly filled them. The entire bay quivered; thelighthouse wobbled; and she had the illusion that the mast of Mr. Connor's little yacht wasbending like a wax candle in the sun. She winked quickly. Accidents were awful things. Shewinked again. The mast was straight; the waves were regular; the lighthouse was upright;but the blot had spread."... nothing for it but to leave," she read."Well, if Jacob doesn't want to play" (the shadow of Archer, her eldest son, fell across thenotepaper and looked blue on the sand, and she felt chilly-it was the third of Septemberalready), "if Jacob doesn't want to play"-what a horrid blot! It must be getting late."Where IS that tiresome little boy?" she said. "I don't see him. Run and find him. Tell him tocome at once." "... but mercifully," she scribbled, ignoring the full stop, "everything seemssatisfactorily arranged, packed though we are like herrings in a barrel, and forced to standthe perambulator which the landlady quite naturally won't allow...."Such were Betty Flanders's letters to Captain Barfoot-many-paged, tear-stained.Scarborough is seven hundred miles from Cornwall: Captain Barfoot is in Scarborough: Seabrook is dead. Tears made all the dahlias in her garden undulate in red waves andflashed the glass house in her eyes, and spangled the kitchen with bright knives, and madeMrs. Jarvis, the rector's wife, think at church, while the hymn-tune played and Mrs.Flanders bent low over her little boys' heads, that marriage is a fortress and widows straysolitary in the open fields, picking up stones, gleaning a few golden straws, lonely, unprotected, poor creatures. Mrs. Flanders had been a widow for these two years."Ja-cob! Ja-cob!" Archer shoute
