The Laighton Arms stood on a curve of the sole street through the village, and Dodo entered as into a land full of promise. An old setter, lying in the passage thumped her a welcome with his tail, as if she was already a familiar and friendly denizen, just returning from some outing. She dined alone at a plain good hospitable board, and presently strolled out again through the front door that stood permanently open into an empty street. It was night now, and the sky was set with drowsy stars that glowed rather than sparkled, and up the street there flowed, not in puffs and gusts, but with the current of a slow moving tide the salt sweetness of the marshes and the sea. Very soon her strolling steps had carried her past the last houses, and in the deep dusk she stood looking out over the empty levels. A big grass-grown bank built to keep out high tides from the meadows zig-zagged obscurely towards the sea, and there was nothing there but the emptiness of the land and the star-studded sky. She waited just to see the moon come up over the eastern horizon and its light confirmed the friendliness of the huge solitude. Then returning, she found a candle set ready for her, which was a clear invitation to go to bed, and looking out below her blind she saw in front a stretch of low land with pools of water reflecting the stars. Six geese, one behind the other, like a frieze, were crossing it very slowly in the direction of the salt-water creek that wound seawards.
For the next week Dodo pursued complete and intentional idleness with the same zeal which all her life had inspired her activities. She got up very late after long hours of smooth deep sleep, and taking a book and a packet of sandwiches in her satchel strolled out along the bank to the ridge of loose shingle that ran east and west along the edge of the sea. At high tide the waves broke against this, and since walking along it was an exercise of treadmill laboriousness she was content to encamp there in some sunny hollow and laze the morning away. Sometimes, for form's sake, she opened her book, read a paragraph or two, wondered what it was about, and then transferred her gaze to the sea. An hour or so passed swiftly in stupefied content, and then shifting her position she probably lay down on her back. Bye and bye hunger dictated the consumption of her sandwiches, and refreshed and revived she would begin a pencilled note to Jack. But after a few words she usually found that she had nothing to say, and watched the sea-gulls (she supposed they were sea-gulls) that patrolled the edge of the breaking waves for food, and dived like cast plummets into the water. Then on the retreat of the tide, the ebb disclosed stretches of hard sand tattooed with pebbles, where walking was easy, and she would wander away towards the point of tumbled sand-dunes that lay westward. A coast-guard station stood there, brought into touch with the world by means of the row of telegraph-posts that ran, mile after mile, straight as an arrow, along this shingle-bank, which defended from the sea the miles of marshes and sand flats which lay on the landward side of it. Through the middle of them broadening into a glittering estuary when the tide was high ran the river that debouched into the sea beyond the point; at low tide it was but a runnel of water threading its way through the enormous flatness of shoal and mud-bank where flocks of sea-birds hovered.