The Spring Madness of Mr. Sermon

Distant from his wealthy, ten-years-younger wife, Sybil, and teenage children, he works competently at his ill-paid job at a boys' preparatory school.

He meets up with a junk/antique dealer, Tapper, on the road and helps him out with his trade (for which Sermon proves to have quite a knack), and goes with him to the fictitious upscale Devon seaside resort of Kingsbay.

Sermon saves a little girl from drowning, whose nanny (who is immediately discharged) is a young woman he's met before in his time at Kingsbay and in fact briefly taught at his school.

The woman, Rachel Grey, proves to be the daughter of the headmaster of Barrowdene, a (fictitious) highly regarded public school near to Kingsbay.

Sermon's summer settles into a routine; days supervising foreshore operations with lunch with Rachel Grey, Saturdays at Barrowdene, Sunday running the antique shop.

Things are rudely interrupted when Sermon, rescuing a woman from a pay toilet with a jammed lock, finds his wife and daughter staring at him.

Boxall simplifies Sermon's romantic life somewhat by sending a letter indicating that she has become infatuated with another tourist, and later, offering to sell her house.

Sermon confronts his wife and tells her this, and when the enraged Sybil stabs him with nail scissors, he (as suggested by his mother in law) spanks her.