whereas travelling by coach is a very different and far more knowledgeable thing.
We keep our eyes very widely open all the way, and observe with interest how the country changes as we near the coast, and how blue the cottage children's eyes are, as though a bit of the sea had got into them and stayed there. Happy folks are always hungry, and by ten o'clock we are clamouring to attack the hamper; at two we are dying of want, and finish it up; at four we pounce upon the quarantines (which were to last us a week, Dorley said), and eat them all too—every one. We get rather fagged the latter part of the way; our bodies are stiff and tired, and we cannot stretch them. By degrees one voice ceases, then another; one of the babies cries; Paul Pry makes remarks that he should not before the children. We look very different to the noisy, bustling, smiling people who started a few hours ago.
By-and-by we are startled out of our apathy by a shout without of "The sea! the sea!" and we leap up to the sight of a broad, boundless expanse of deepest, darkest blue, that thrills us through and through, and holds us spell-bound with a breathless delight and strong awe. How our souls seem drawn towards it, though our bodies remain in the coach! Presently (I do not know how it happens, we are standing before it, gazing almost deliriously at the glittering, belted-in treasure. When the first shock is over how we stretch out our arms to it, as though we would clasp its beauty in our embrace! How we stoop and dabble our fingers in the strange, salt liquid! How we stand watching the waves lapping softly over each other with no fuss or hurry, or effort, rather as though they were in play not earnest, but, as we quickly find, impelled by an on-coming strength that makes the babyish ripples resistless as fate, inexorable as death! We gather trails of brown seaweed, and when our hands are full, cast them away for others. We are distracted by the abundant riches of the feast set out before
