Next they put it in a heap on a slate which they have discovered, and then search for pieces of brick and flat stone, which are piled on the top. In this way a certain quantity of the seed is compressed, and called a cheese, which is deposited with ceremony upon one of the stone tables.
The little girl has been the leader throughout; she has decided which plants were ripe enough to be stripped, how much seed was necessary to form a cheese, and upon which of the stones the feast should be spread. The boy has been her obedient servant, a position of things which reaches its climax when the little lady suddenly states that she doesn’t like cheese, and orders him to eat it all up!
This is a vision that has come from time to time for more than forty years, and few playgrounds have seemed so attractive.
The Old Tree in the Garden.
Then there is the old tree of the garden. Who does not love the memory of the games played beneath it, and the seats it afforded among its boughs? Maybe it was a mulberry, or merely an ancient laurel. Playgrounds may be found in and under both. In another case it was a mighty yew, noted in the annals of the county. A few feet up upon its massive stem, the children had special seats, and woe betide intruders caught trespassing! Beneath it was a long bench, of which the supports were obviously at one time a part of one of the great boughs, while the seat had in the distant ages been green.
Playing at Shop.
What feasts were spread upon this seat—what shops were kept with this for the counter! There is a dust that forms beneath old yews, and consists of the dead and crumbled petals. What splendid stuff it is to play with! It can be sold as snuff, or almost anything, and it pours out of a teapot as easily as water. But there is no need to say more; everyone can remember the invented games, and the best-loved haunts of their childhood.
A Whitby Playground.
One more playground of a thoroughly unconventional character may well be mentioned here. It is just where the base of one of the Whitby piers starts from the end of a narrow street or passage. The huge stones worn and rounded at their edge make a couple of steps down to the water’s edge, but steps so big that, if you are still a small boy, they compel you to sit down and slide and scramble, holding on as best you may, till you have reached the bottom. It is great fun to watch the children descending by their various methods. Big boys (and girls too) manage it easily, laughing and shouting as they bump their way down. But with the little ones it is different. A girl arrives, with a baby wrapped up in a shawl; this requires management: baby is set down on the top step, and told to stay quite still, then away slides the small nurse on to the intermediate resting-place some three or four feet below; then a pair of arms are stretched up, and baby struggles into them with a chuckle of satisfaction, and is once more deposited, while the elder sister springs down on to the soft wet sand, and next minute baby, too, is safe in the desired corner. This is what it practically is, this desirable playground, just a corner in the harbour laid bare at low tide, and having the pier on its one side, and the walls of the old town on the other. How lovely those old walls were! Looking right up one sees the ends projecting above the gables of red-tiled roofs, while below are the grey walls—no, not grey, though many seem so at first sight, but yellow, blue, red, green—every colour, in fact, that stones will take, when long exposed to sea and weather. Then at the bottom just above the sand runs a long wide course of stones that are covered by every tide, and have in consequence become clothed with a fringe of brown and green and golden seaweed.
There are small windows here and there, high up in the walls, and now and again a sheet or a towel is hung out to dry, a picturesque object enough against a mass of building; and from above the wall of a yard a number of poles, leaning in the corner, project and break the monotony of the surface.