The way, as a general thing, lay close by the shore, winding over the tops of low cliffs covered with dry yellow grasses. Now and then it dipped down to strips of shingle beach, or skirted little coves with boundaries of bushes and brambles edging the sand. Miles are not easy to reckon when people are following the ins and outs of an irregular coast. Half a dozen times Eyebright clambered to the water's edge and peeped round the shoulder of a great rock, thinking that she must have got to the cave at last. Yet nothing met her eyes but more rocks, and surf, and fissures brown with rust and barnacles. At last, she came on a group of children, playing in the sand, and stopped to ask the way of them.
There were two thin, brown little girls in pink-and-gray gingham frocks, and pink-and-gray striped stockings appearing over the tops of high, laced boots. They were exactly the same size, and made Eyebright think of grasshoppers, they were so wiry and active, and sprang about so nimbly. Then there were three rosy, hearty-looking country children, and a pair of little boys, with sharp, delicately cut faces, who seemed to be brothers, for they looked like each other and quite unlike the rest. All seven were digging holes in the sand with sticks and shovels, and were as much absorbed in their work as a party of diligent beavers. When Eyebright appeared, with Genevieve in her arms, they stopped digging and looked at her curiously.
"Do you know how far the Oven is from here?" asked Eyebright.
"No," and "What's the Oven?" answered the children, and one of the gray-and-pink little girls added: "My, what a big doll!" Eyebright scarcely heeded these answers, she was so delighted to see some children after her long fast from childhood.
"What are you making?" she asked.
"A fort," replied one of the boys.
"Now, Fweddy, you said you'd call it a castle," put in one of the girls.
"Well, castles are just the same things as forts. My mother said so."
"Is that your mother sitting there?" asked Eyebright catching a glimpse of a woman and a baby under a tree not far off.
"Oh, dear, no! That's Mrs. Waurigan. She's Jenny's mother, you know, and 'Mandy's and Peter Paul Rubens's. She's not our mother at all. My mother's name is Mrs. Brown, and my papa is Dr. Azariah P. Brown. We live in New York city. Did you ever see New York city?"