Excerpt: ...and beautiful waves was pleasure enough; and then she was allowed, to her wonder and delight, to have a holland dress, and dig in the sand, making castles and moats, or rocks and shipwrecks, with beautiful stories about them; and sometimes she hunted for the few shells and sea-weeds there, or she sat down and read some of her favourite books, especially poetry-it suited the sea so well; and she was trying to make Ellen's Isle and all the places of the "Lady of the Lake" in sand, only she never had time to finish ...
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Excerpt: ...and beautiful waves was pleasure enough; and then she was allowed, to her wonder and delight, to have a holland dress, and dig in the sand, making castles and moats, or rocks and shipwrecks, with beautiful stories about them; and sometimes she hunted for the few shells and sea-weeds there, or she sat down and read some of her favourite books, especially poetry-it suited the sea so well; and she was trying to make Ellen's Isle and all the places of the "Lady of the Lake" in sand, only she never had time to finish them, and they always were either thrown down or washed away before she could return to them. But among all these amusements, she was watching the families of children who played together, happy creatures! The little sturdy boys, that dabbled about so merrily, and minded so little the "Now Masters" of their indignant nurses; the little girls in brown hats, with their baskets full; the big boys, that even took off shoes, and dabbled in the shallow water; the great sieges of large castles, where whole parties attacked and defended-it was a sort of melancholy glimpse of fairy-land to her, for she had only been allowed to walk on the beach with Josephine on condition she never spoke to the other children. Would the Lord Chancellor be after her if she did? Her heart quite yearned for those games, or even to be able to talk to one of those little damsels; and one day when a bright-faced girl ran after her with a piece of weed that she had dropped, she could hardly say "thank you" for her longing to say more; and many were the harangues she composed within herself to warn the others not to wish to change places with her, for to be a countess was very poor fun indeed. However, one morning at the end of the first week, Kate looked up from a letter from Sylvia, and said with great glee, "Aunt Barbara! O Aunt Barbara! Alice and the other Sylvia-Sylvia Joanna-are coming! I may play with them, mayn't I?" "Who are they?" said her aunt gravely....
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