but the faces of those emerging quickly lost their dim, chilled
expression when they perceived that it was only by standing in a queue
that one could be admitted to the pier. Once through the turnstiles,
every one walked for a yard or two very briskly; some flagged at this
stall; others at that.

But it was the band that drew them all to it finally; even the fishermen
on the lower pier taking up their pitch within its range.

The band played in the Moorish kiosk. Number nine went up on the board.
It was a waltz tune. The pale girls, the old widow lady, the three Jews
lodging in the same boarding-house, the dandy, the major, the horse-
dealer, and the gentleman of independent means, all wore the same
blurred, drugged expression, and through the chinks in the planks at
their feet they could see the green summer waves, peacefully, amiably,
swaying round the iron pillars of the pier.

But there was a time when none of this had any existence (thought the
young man leaning against the railings). Fix your eyes upon the lady's
skirt; the grey one will do--above the pink silk stockings. It changes;
drapes her ankles--the nineties; then it amplifies--the seventies; now
it's burnished red and stretched above a crinoline--the sixties; a tiny
black foot wearing a white cotton stocking peeps out. Still sitting
there? Yes--she's still on the pier. The silk now is sprigged with
roses, but somehow one no longer sees so clearly. There's no pier
beneath us. The heavy chariot may swing along the turnpike road, but
there's no pier for it to stop at, and how grey and turbulent the sea is
in the seventeenth century! Let's to the museum. Cannon-balls; arrow-
heads; Roman glass and a forceps green with verdigris. The Rev. Jaspar
Floyd dug them up at his own expense early in the forties in the Roman