Smile down on me here at your feet,
Little one.
“HOW MAMA USED TO PLAY.”
VII.—THE SAND-BANK.
That sand-bank in the pasture was one of the nicest of our playhouses. There was neither dust nor dirt in it—nothing but clean, fine sand, with now and then a pebble. It was not high, so there was no danger of a great mass of sand falling down on us two children.
The sand-bank was not very far from the little brook. Myra and I would carry pailful after pailful of water from the brook to it, until we had moistened a large quantity of sand. Sometimes we would cover our little bare feet with the cool, wet sand, packing it just as close as we could. Then gently, O, so gently, we would pull our feet out from under the sand. The little “five-toed caves” as we used to call them, would show just as plain as could be, where our little feet had been! We used to catch little toads and put them into those little damp caves, but they would soon hop out.
We used to make the nicest pies and cakes and cookies out of that lovely wet sand. We used to wish our sand-dainties were fit to eat!
Oftentimes, when we were tired of cooking, we would go to work and lay out a wonderful garden with tiny flower-beds and winding paths, out of that wet sand. Some of those flower-beds were star-shaped, some were round as a wheel, and some were square. We used to gather handfuls of wild-flowers and stick them down in, until every tiny bed blossomed into pink and blue and white and gold!
We used to make sand-preserves out there. The time and the patience that we used up in filling narrow-necked bottles with sand! After a bottle was well-filled and shaken down, we would catch up that bottle and run down to the brook. We would wash the outside of that bottle until it shone like cut-glass, and then we would pack it away in a hollow stump that we called our preserve-closet.
We used to play a game that we called “Hop-scotch” out in the old sand-bank. In this game, you mark the sand off into rather large squares. Then hopping along on one foot, you try with your toe to push a pebble from one square into another.