Then both children gave a little gasp. For the heads of the two black cats had suddenly appeared, as if from nowhere, staring into the pool over the woman’s shoulders. Their big green eyes followed the movements of her arm with keen expectant interest, as it searched groping in the depths.
At last, very slowly, Agnes’s hand came to the top and in its knotted grasp was a shell. It was a beauty, and like no other the children had ever seen; the size of a large apple; green on the outside, pearly white within; plump, almost round in shape, screwed slightly at one end. It was half filled with sand. Agnes rinsed it clean and then examined it carefully. And Anne heard her whisper to herself:
‘What luck! It is the one—and not a chip on it.’
Then she looked up at the children, and that kind, wrinkly smile spread over her face, which for a while had worn an anxious, worried look.
‘But where on earth did these cats come from, Mother Agnes?’ asked Giles.
‘Oh, they just followed me out from the town, most likely,’ said the old woman. ‘Never mind them. They’re always turning up. I want you to hold this shell to your ear now and hear how it can sing you the roaring song of the sea.’
From where they were standing, hardly anything of the ocean’s surf could be seen or heard except the little murmurous rushes of flat water that from time to time ran in and out again over the shingly sands between the boulders.
Giles held the shell to his ear.
‘Do you hear anything?’ asked Agnes.
For a moment the boy was silent, listening. But soon a slow smile came over his screwed-up face.