‘It’s a good day for the seashore,’ said she. ‘Let’s go down and hunt for shells and pebbles while the tide is out.’
‘Yes, but we won’t forget about Father, will we?’ asked Anne.
‘Oh, no,’ crooned Agnes, in a strange, sing-song voice. ‘You know, I never forget anything. Often I wish I could. Come along, youngsters.’
Silently the two children followed her down the funny, winding streets, past wharves and landing walls, till a fresh sea wind struck their faces. It set the thrill of adventure tingling through their minds. Just the sharp, clean scent of it conjured up glories of travel, voyage pictures which they had never known but which they hoped some day to see.
Soon the town was left behind entirely. And now old Mother Agnes led the way more slowly, over the loose sands of a beach.
Further yet, the shore took on a wilder look, with high cliffs, rocks and bays. And there were pools, pools that lay upon the beach like little lakes where creatures swam or crawled, crabs and shrimps and burrowing things. They seemed so easy to catch that Anne was all for stopping to gather up some shellfish. But the Applewoman seemed bent on going farther, as though she had a place in mind to reach.
At last, when they came to it, the children found it well worth their patience and the walk. Where two walls of tumbled rock stretched down from the cliffs into the sea, a piece of the beach was surrounded and cut off from the eyes of the world. It seemed like a fairies’ sea garden. Big wet boulders, patterned with barnacles and mussels, hung with curtains of kelp, stood close together in rows and squares—a little town, in fact, of tiny streets, with something new to find around each corner. Sometimes these streets of Boulder Town turned into canals, linking together more ponds and tiny lakes where gay anemones and starfish waved beneath the water.
The children, every other thought and care swept from their minds, ran or waded to and fro from place to place, each for ever calling to the other to come and see a new discovery.
So many things were to be seen, caves of mystery to be explored, coloured pebble-gems to be collected and goodness knows what besides, that it must have been nearly an hour before the youngsters suddenly remembered they had not seen Agnes since they came here.
They found her, after some hunting, on the far side of a large rock. Here the tides had scoured out a pool larger and deeper than the rest; and under the overhanging boulder no bottom could be seen to its fascinating blue-green depths. It might have been the lair of some monster of story, half-beast, half-fish.