"Oh no; it is much bigger, more than twice. And I haven't the seaweed, or the shells, and it comes back very, very quickly."
"But where is the little boy you play with down here by the sea?"
She glanced at me swiftly and surely; and shook her head again.
"He would help you."
"He didn't in my dream," she said doubtfully. She raised long, stealthy eyes to mine, and spoke softly and deliberately. "Besides, there isn't any little boy."
"None, Annabel Lee?" I said.
"Why," she answered, "I have played here years and years and years, and there are only the gulls and terns and cormorants, and that!" She pointed with her spade towards the broken water.
"You know all their names then?" I said.
"Some I know," she answered with a little frown, and looked far out to sea. Then, turning her eyes, she gazed long at me, searchingly, forlornly on a stranger. "I am going home now," she said.
I looked at the house of sand and smiled. But she shook her head once more.