“I must make haste,” she said, “or you’ll lose your beauty sleep; but, fortunately, it is not a long story.”
“Once upon a time there was a little boy about five years old, who had been very ill indeed, and, when he grew well enough to be up and dressed, the doctor said he must be taken to the sea-side. So his mother took him for two weeks to a beautiful rocky place on the New England coast.”
“Like Prout’s Neck, mamma?”
“Very much like Prout’s Neck, dear. And she put a little blue flannel suit, and a big hat on him, and tried to keep him out in the salt air and the sunshine all day. But he was weak, and grew tired very soon, and did not seem to feel able to play with the healthy, strong little children, of whom there were plenty about, and he used to beg to go indoors, and be read to, so that his mother was very glad when the kind-hearted old sailor, whose wife kept the boarding-house, offered them the use of a fine field-glass.
“‘The little man can lie on the rocks and watch the ships go by,’ said the captain, ‘and he’ll soon lose that peak-ed look he has, and be as brown as a berry.’
THE FIELD-GLASS.