III.
LUCY.
Old ocean seemed to wish to make amends, during the last two days of the short voyage, for the tossing and rolling he had given our friends during the first. It was as smooth as a river almost, and broke itself up into little wavelets which seemed formed only to sparkle and catch the sunshine. The weather was warm and summer-like, growing more and more so the farther south they went; and the children spent the whole of their time on deck, even taking their meals there: for though Maggie declared herself “all right now,” she could not eat when taken below, and it was “such fun” to have breakfast, dinner, and tea, sent up to them and eaten on deck in such impromptu fashion, that the others were only too glad of the excuse of bearing her company. Mamma and Mrs. Norris preferred it too; so they had quite a sociable, cosey time of it.
As for Bessie, she wanted “no better contentment” than to sit watching the sea. The sky; the waves; the white sea-gulls, which now and then came sailing round on their snowy wings; the other vessels they saw in the far distance, or sometimes near at hand; the huge porpoises which threw themselves with a sudden leap and plunge out from the water and back again,—each and all had their charm for her; and, if undisturbed, she would sit for hours, her doll clasped in her arms, gazing her fill, and thinking her own thoughts. Happy, peaceful thoughts they were too, if one might judge by the expression of her sweet little face.
“How my Bessie loves the sea, does she not?” said her father, sitting down beside her one time when he found her thus absorbed.
“Yes, papa, dearly; but then I love the real sea better.”
“But this is the real sea, darling.”