by Henry James

“ This relative took her pleasure of a week at Bournemouth in a stuffy back-kitchen and endless talks; to that degree even that Mr. Mudge himself—habitually inclined indeed to a scrutiny of all mysteries and to seeing, as he sometimes admitted, too much in things—made remarks on it as he sat on the cliff with his betrothed, or on the decks of steamers that conveyed them, close-packed items in terrific totals of enjoyment, to the Isle of Wight and the Dorset coast. ”

“ She could accept even without bitterness a rigour of economy so great that the little fee they paid for admission to the pier had to be balanced against other delights. The people at Ladle’s and at Thrupp’s had their ways of amusing themselves, whereas she had to sit and hear Mr. Mudge talk of what he might do if he didn’t take a bath, or of the bath he might take if he only hadn’t taken something else. He was always with her now, of course, always beside her; she saw him more than “hourly,” more than ever yet, more even than he had planned she should do at Chalk Farm. ”

“ Mudge himself liked processions, liked them at Bournemouth and on the pier quite as much as at Chalk Farm or anywhere, she learned after a little not to be worried by his perpetual counting of the figures that made them up. There were dreadful women in particular, usually fat and in men’s caps and write shoes, whom he could never let alone—not that she cared ”