No; there is no sadness about the sea-wave in the happy, merry days of childhood.
Littlehampton is altogether a children’s watering-place. There they were by the dozen and score, sailing yachts in little pools, flying kites and building castles, playing at horses, riding on donkeys, gathering shells and seaweed, dancing, singing, laughing, screaming, racing, chasing, paddling and puddling, and all as happy as happy could be.
I was always pleased enough to have interesting children come and see me; whether they brought little bouquets of flowers with them—which they often did—or not, they always brought sunshine.
Let me give just one or two specimens of my juvenile visitors. I could give a hundred.
Sweet Maudie Brewer.
I could not help qualifying her name with a pretty adjective from the first moment I saw her. Not that Maudie is a very beautiful child, but so winning and engaging, and exceedingly old-fashioned. I made her acquaintance at the inn where my horses were stabled. She is an orphan—virtually, at all events—but the landlord of the hotel is exceedingly good to her, and very proud also of his wee six-year-old Maudie.
It is as a conversationalist that Maudie shines. She has no shyness, but talks like an old, old world-wise mite of a woman.
“Now,” she said, after we had talked on a variety of topics, “come into the parlour and I shall play and sing to you?”
As she took me by the hand I had to go, but had I known the little treat I was to have I should have gone more willingly. For not only can Maudie sing well, but she plays airs and waltzes in a way that quite surprised me; and I found myself standing by the piano turning over the leaves for this child of six summers as seriously as if she had been seventeen. That was Maudie Brewer.
Wee Dickie Ellis.