We led a perfect gypsy life at the Brambles; no one called on us, the vicar of Roseberry was away, and a stranger had taken his duty; no interloper from the outer world broke the peaceful monotony of our days, and the sea kept up its plaintive music night and day, and the larks sang to us, and the busy humming of insect life made an undertone of melody, and in early mornings the little garden seemed steeped in dew and fragrance. We used to rise early, and after breakfast Flurry and I bathed. There was a little bathing-room beyond the cottage with a sort of wooden bridge running over the beach, and there Flurry and I would disport ourselves like mermaids.
After a brisk run on the sands or over the downs, we joined Miss Ruth on the beach, where we worked and talked, or helped the children build sand-castles, and deck them with stone and sea-weeds. What treasures we collected for Carrie's Sunday scholars; what stores of bright-colored seaweed—or sea flowers, as Dot persisted in calling them—and heaps of faintly-tinged shells!
Flurry's doll family had accompanied us to the Brambles. "The poor dear things wanted change of air!" Flurry had decided; and in spite of my dissuasion, all the fair waxen creatures and their heterogeneous wardrobe had been consigned to a vast trunk.
Flurry's large family had given her infinite trouble when we settled for our mornings on the beach. She traveled up and down the long stony hillocks to the cottage until her little legs ached, to fetch the twelve dolls. When they were all deposited in their white sun-bonnets under a big umbrella, to save their complexions, which, notwithstanding, suffered severely, then, and then only, would Flurry join Dot on the narrow sands.
Sometimes the tide rose, or a sudden shower came on, and then great was the confusion. Once a receding wave carried out Corporal Trim, the most unlucky of dolls, to sea. Flurry wrung her hands and wept so bitterly over this disaster that Miss Ruth was quite frightened, and Flossy jumped up and licked his little mistress' face and the faces of the dolls by turns.
"Oh, the dear thing is drownded," sobbed Flurry, as Corporal Trim floundered hopelessly in the surge. Dot's soft heart was so moved by her distress that he hobbled into the water, crutches and all, to my infinite terror.
"Don't cry. Flurry; I've got him by the hair of his head," shouted Dot, valiantly shouldering the dripping doll. Flurry ran down the beach with the tears still on her cheeks, and took the wretched corporal and hugged him to her bosom.
"Oh, my poor drownded Trim," cried Flurry tenderly, and a strange procession formed to the cottage. Flurry with the poor victim in her arms and Flossy jumping and barking delightedly round her, and snatching at the wet rags; Dot, also, wet and miserable, toiling up the beach on his crutches; Miss Ruth and I following with the eleven dolls.
The poor corporal spent the rest of the day watching his own clothes drying by the kitchen fire, where Dot kept him company; Flurry trotted in and out, and petted them both. I am afraid Dot, being a boy, often found the dolls a nuisance, and could have dispensed with their company. There was a grand quarrel once when he flatly refused to carry one. "I can't make believe to be a girl," said Dot, curling his lip with infinite contempt.
"We used to spend our afternoons in the garden. It was cooler than the beach, and the shade of the old medlar was refreshing. We sometimes read aloud to the children, but oftener they were working in their little gardens, or playing with some tame rabbits that belonged to Flurry. Dot always hobbled after Flurry wherever she went; he was her devoted slave. Flurry sometimes treated him like one of her dolls, or put on little motherly airs, in imitation of Miss Ruth.