What fun we had through that holiday month! There is something in the sea which always makes me feel in good spirits. When the waves come rolling in and dash over the rocks, when the sea birds fly overhead, with their strange cries, when the white foam on the shore sparkles in the sunshine, even now that I have some gray hairs in my head, I feel quite young again, and ready to skip for joy.
I felt very wild the day I first spoke to old Jonah. Hilda and I had been running on the rocks looking for crabs and sea anemones, and Daisy had been paddling in a shallow sandy pool, and filling her little bucket with water. It was a fresh, bright, windy day, and there was not a cloud on the sky.
SUMMER DAYS ON THE BEACH.
"Mother," said Hilda, as we sat down to rest, "what is that big bell hanging between two posts near the coast-guard's house? Daisy calls it the sailors' dinner-bell."
Somebody laughed when Hilda said that, and we looked round and saw Jonah standing near us. He was an old fisherman whom we had often seen walking on the beach, but we had never spoken to him before.
"Dinner-bell, little Missy?" he said. "Begging your pardon for hearing what you was saying—dinner-bell, did ye say? It's a funny kind of a dinner that bell rings for! What do you think they give us for dinner when that bell calls us? Not roast beef and plum-pudding, I can tell you!"
SPINNING A YARN.
"Is it soup?" asked Daisy in a melancholy voice. For Daisy did not like soup, and always looked very dismal when it appeared on the table.