"Under the lich-gate, then," suggested Isobel. "It'll be cooler, for it's in the shade, and there's a seat, too."
"What a simply broiling day!" said Belle, settling herself as luxuriously as possible in the corner, and pulling off her hat to fan her hot face. "I don't like such heat as this; it takes my hair out of curl," tenderly twisting one of her flaxen ringlets into its proper orthodox droop.
"It's jolly here. We get a little wind, and we can watch everything all round," said Isobel, sitting with her chin in her hands, and gazing over the water to where the herring fleet was tacking back to the harbour.
The children could scarcely have chosen a sweeter spot to rest. Below them lay the sea, a broad flat expanse of blue, getting a little hazy gray on the horizon, and with a greenish ripple where it neared the rocks, upon which its waves were always dashing with a dull, booming sound.
The old town, with its red roofs and poppy-filled gardens, made such a spot of brightness against the blue sea that it suggested the brilliant colouring of a foreign port, all the more so in contrast to the gray tower of the church behind and the wind-swept yew trees which had somehow managed to survive the winter storms. The grass had been mown in the churchyard, and filled the air with a fragrant scent of hay; a big bumble-bee buzzed noisily over a bed of wild thyme under the wall, and a swallow was feeding a row of young ones upon the ridged roof of the sexton's cottage. In the great stretch of blue above, the little fleecy clouds formed themselves into snowy mountains with valleys and lakes between, a kind of dream country in purest white, and Isobel wondered whether, if one could sail straight on to the very verge of the distance where sea and sky seemed to meet, one could slip altogether over the invisible line that bounds the horizon, and find oneself floating in that cloudland region.
"It's like the edge of heaven," she thought. "I think the saints must live there, and the cherubim and seraphim much farther and higher up—right in the blue part. One could never see them; but perhaps sometimes on a day like this the saints might come back a little way out of the light and nearer to the earth where they used to live, and if one looked very hard one might manage to catch a glimpse of them just where the sun's shining on that white piece."
"O blest communion! fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle; they in glory shine!"
came wafted through the open church door, the sound of the singing, rather far off and subdued, seeming to join in harmony with the lap of the waves, the hum of the bees, the cries of the sea-gulls, the twittering of the swallows, and all the other glad voices of nature. It looked such a beautiful, joyful, delightful, glorious world that Isobel sat very quietly for a time just drinking in the sweet air and the sunshine, and feeling, without exactly knowing why, that it was good to be there.
"Are you asleep?" said Belle at last, in an injured tone; "you haven't spoken to me for at least five minutes. I'm sure it must be getting near tea-time. Let us go now."
"All right," said Isobel, recalling herself with a start—she had almost forgotten Belle's existence for the moment. "It's so nice on these steps, one feels as if one were up above everything. It's like being on the roof of the world. Perhaps that was why St. Alcuin and the monks built the abbey here; it seems so very near to the sky."