Explore "Mufti" by H.C. McNeile on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The beach at Paris Plage is associated in the minds of most people who / went there before the war with a certain amount of gaiety. There were / bands, and fair ladies, and various other delights generally connected / with popular French watering-places. Incidentally the beach is a / beach -- not a collection of sharp boulders. There is real sand -- lots of / it; the sort that gets hot and comforting in the sun, and invites / people who have eaten too much luncheon to sleep. And during the war, / though the bands and other delights have departed, the sand has / remained a source of pleasure to hundreds of people in need of a / temporary rest cure. They have come from the big hospitals at Etaples; / they have come from the officers' rest-house. Some have even come in / motor cars from the trenches just for the day, and one and all they / have lain on the beach and slept and then departed the better for it.
On a certain afternoon during the height of the German offensive in the / spring of 1918 a girl was sitting on the beach staring out to sea. On / the horizon a black smudge of smoke stood up against the vivid blue of / the sky; while, close in shore, a small sailing boat was barely making / headway in the faint breeze.