On a low rock at its foot, her back resting against the Cyclopean
wall, sits a young woman of eight-and-twenty, soberly, almost primly
dressed, with three or four tiny children clustering round her. In
front of them, on a narrow spit of sand between the rocks, a dozen
little girls are laughing, romping, and pattering about, turning the
stones for "shannies" and "bullies," and other luckless fish left by
the tide; while the party beneath the pier wall look steadfastly down
into a little rock-pool at their feet,--full of the pink and green
and purple cut-work of delicate weeds and coralline, and starred with
great sea-dahlias, crimson and brown and grey, and with the waving
snake-locks of the Cercus, pale blue, and rose-tipped like the fingers
of the dawn. One delicate Medusa is sliding across the pool, by slow
pantings of its crystal bell; and on it the eyes of the whole group
are fixed,--for it seems to be the subject of some story which the
village schoolmistress is finishing in a sweet, half-abstracted
voice,--
"And so the cruel soldier was changed into a great rough red starfish,
who goes about killing the poor mussels, while nobody loves him, or
cares to take his part; and the poor little girl was changed into a
beautiful bright jelly-fish, like that one, who swims about all day in
the pleasant sunshine, with a red cross stamped on its heart."
"Oh, mistress, what a pretty story!" cry the little ones, with tearful
eyes.
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