Sometimes a straw hat was blown away.  Tulips burnt in the sun.  Numbers of sponge-bag trousers were stretched in rows.  Purple bonnets fringed soft, pink, querulous faces on pillows in bath chairs.  Triangular hoardings were wheeled along by men in white coats.  Captain George Boase had caught a monster shark.  One side of the triangular hoarding said so in red, blue, and yellow letters; and each line ended with three differently coloured notes of exclamation.

So that was a reason for going down into the Aquarium, where the sallow blinds, the stale smell of spirits of salt, the bamboo chairs, the tables with ash-trays, the revolving fish, the attendant knitting behind six or seven chocolate boxes (often she was quite alone with the fish for hours at a time) remained in the mind as part of the monster shark, he himself being only a flabby yellow receptacle, like an empty Gladstone bag in a tank.  No one had ever been cheered by the Aquarium; 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 camp on Dods Hill—­see the little ticket with the faded writing on it.

And now, what’s the next thing to see in Scarborough?

Mrs. Flanders sat on the raised circle of the Roman camp, patching Jacob’s breeches; only looking up as she sucked the end of her cotton, or when some insect dashed at her, boomed in her ear, and was gone.