When they emerged, Polly had a china windmill, and an inkstand of Delft ware, and several other things, and Jasper carried all the big bundles. "O dear me," said Polly, "now we must run, or we sha'n't have much time to stay on the beach; and besides, Grandpapa will worry over us if we're not there."
"We can't run much, loaded down with this," said Jasper, looking at his armful and laughing, "or we'd likely drop half of them, and smash them to pieces. Wait a bit, Polly, I'm going to buy you some fruit." They stopped at the top of the stone stairway leading down to the sands, where some comely peasant women, fishermen's wives, held great baskets of fruit, and in one hand was a pair of scales. "Now, then, what will you have, Polly?"
"Oh, some grapes, please, Jasper," said Polly. "Aren't they most beautiful?"
"I should say they were; they are black Hamburgs," declared Jasper. "Now, then, my good woman, give us a couple of pounds." He put down the coin she asked for, and she weighed them out in her scales, and did them up in a piece of a Dutch newspaper.
"We are much worse off now, Jasper," laughed Polly, as they got over the stairs somehow with their burdens, "since we've all these grapes to carry. O dear me, there goes one!"
"Never mind," said Jasper, looking over his armful of presents, to investigate his paper of grapes; "if we don't lose but one, we're lucky."
"And there goes another," announced Polly, as they picked their way over and through the thick sand.
"Well, I declare," exclaimed old Mr. King, peering out of his Bath chair, "if you children aren't loaded down!" He was eating black Hamburg grapes. Phronsie sat opposite him almost lost in the depth of another Bath chair, similarly occupied. And at a little remove was the remainder of the party, and they all were in Bath chairs, and eating black Hamburg grapes.
"We've had such fun," sighed Polly, and she and Jasper cast their bundles on the soft sand; then she threw herself down next to them, and pushed up the little brown rings from her damp brow.
Jasper set his paper of grapes in her lap, then rushed off. "I'll get you a Bath chair," he said, beckoning to the attendant.