Ten minutes later the cheerful band hurried down the wide garden path, followed by the envious glances of girls who lay here and there under the pepper-trees enduring the hot afternoon as best they might. Someone begged Jo lazily to bring her back a strawberry ice, a dismal pleasantry which evoked groans from its hearers. Outside, the pavement felt sticky underfoot with the heat. Little eddies of winds swirled here and there, scattering dead leaves and scraps of dusty paper. On the shady side of the street a few tired children toiled home from school, swinging straps of books; but there were not many people to be seen. Even the tram which the girls boarded presently was nearly empty, and the conductor seemed almost too tired to collect their fares. He perched on his tiny seat at the back of the car, glanced with a covetous eye at their rubber bathing-bags, and remarked audibly to himself that it was better to be born lucky than rich!
The esplanade at St. Kilda lay grilling under the heat, the yellow sand of the beach contrasting sharply with the wilted green of the strip of garden and lawn that lies between the roadway and the shore. Beyond gleamed a grey expanse of sea, its surface not marked by the tiniest wave until it broke in lazy ripples on the beach, where hundreds of children were bathing and paddling. The sands were churned into hills and hollows by innumerable feet: greasy lunch-papers littered them, with crumpled bags that had once held cakes and fruit. Rows of deck-chairs bore the forms of slumbering grown-ups; here and there a mother roused herself to shout to Tommy and Winnie that they were going too far into the water and had better come out, now, and behave. Babies crawled everywhere, fighting, falling over, and eating sand and strange treasure-trove of the littered beach. As the girls watched, one crawled straight into the sea, laughing gleefully at the warm touch of the shallow water. A half-naked little brother pursued it, shouting threats and dragged it up the sand, fulfilling his promise of a smack. The baby howled distressfully, and the mother stirred to say, “Now, Willie, whatcher doin’? Couldn’t yer let ’er alone for ’arf a minute?” She gave the annoyed baby a cake, and the baby ceased howling, and fell upon it wolfishly, its joy in it not at all disturbed by the fact that between bites it generally fell into the sand. Willie also seized a cake, and departed, with the puzzled air of one who, having done his duty, receives no commendation. The mother slumbered again.