“There is always something that has got to be caught,” sighed Loveday—“the train, or the tide, or the fish, or the post. But I’m very glad I am up so early, now I am up. I want to go out and see what things are like in the morning. They generally look different then, don’t they?”
“Oh dear,” she said quite apologetically, when presently she came to the breakfast-table, “I am afraid I am very hungry. I hope you won’t be frightened when you see what a lot I eat.”
She really felt quite ashamed of her big appetite, but John and Bessie only laughed, and John said:
“That’s good hearing, missie. Nothing you can do in that way’ll frighten us, seeing as we’m ’customed to Aaron and me.”
John sat at the head of the table, nearest the fireplace, while Bessie sat outside, where she could easily reach the kettle or the teapot on the stove. Loveday’s chair was placed at the end, facing John, while the table was pulled out a little way for Aaron to sit in the window amongst the geraniums and cinerarias. In her heart Loveday wished that she could sit in there, but at the same time she was rather pleased with her own position; it seemed older and more dignified.
After breakfast there came the excitement of seeing off the boat, and then, when that was done, Loveday felt that she really could settle down for a moment and have time to look about her. Aaron was very anxious to see her toys and all the other treasures she had brought with her, for this was a much greater novelty to him than picking up shells or hunting for crabs, besides which Bessie would not let them go alone clambering over the rocks, or paddling in the pools, and she could not go with them for a little while, as she had her house to set straight and the dinner to get.
So they sat on the sands within sight of Bessie, and played with a grocer’s shop that Loveday had brought, and a box of cubes, and a popgun, and a monkey and an elephant, and sundry other things, but to her surprise none of the things pleased Aaron so much as did the books. He turned the pages of her fairy-tales over and over, and gazed at the pictures, and asked questions about them, until at last Loveday grew quite tired of answering him.
“Haven’t you got any books?” she asked at last rather impatiently, for she would have been much better pleased to have had his help in building sand-castles.
“No, I have never had a book in all my life,” he said wistfully. “I didn’t know there was any with picshers in them like these here.”
“Didn’t you?” cried Loveday, scarcely able to believe him. “I wish I’d known it; I’d have brought you one of mine.”