in it, or of their tiny sisters who are dancing about in the dirtiest
pool among the trawlers in a way which (if your respectable black coat
be seen upon the pier) will elicit from one of the balconied windows
above, decked with reeking shirts and linen, some such shriek as--

"Patience Penberthy, Patience Penberthy--a! You nasty, dirty, little
ondecent hussy--a! What be playing in the quay-pool for--a! A pulling
up your pesticoats before the quality--a!" Each exclamation being
followed with that groaning grunt, with which the West-country folk,
after having screamed their lungs empty through their noses, recover
their breath for a fresh burst.

Never mind; it is no nosegay, certainly as a whole: but did you ever
see sturdier, rosier, nobler-looking children,--rounder faces, raven
hair, bright grey eyes, full of fun and tenderness? As for the dirt,
that cannot harm them; poor people's children must be dirty--why not?
Look on fifty yards to the left. Between two ridges of high pebble
bank, some twenty yards apart, comes Alva river rushing to the sea.
On the opposite ridge, a low white house, with three or four white
canvas-covered boats, and a flag-staff with sloping cross-yard,
betokens the coast-guard station. Beyond it rise black jagged cliffs;
mile after mile of iron-bound wall; and here and there, at the glens'
mouths, great banks and denes of shifting sand. In front of it, upon
the beach, are half-a-dozen great green and grey heaps of Welsh
limestone; behind it, at the cliff foot, is the lime-kiln, with its
white dusty heaps, and brown dusty men, its quivering mirage of hot
air, its strings of patient hay-nibbling donkeys, which look as
if they had just awakened out of a flour bin. Above, a green down
stretches up to bright yellow furze-crofts far aloft. Behind a reedy
marsh, covered with red cattle, paves the valley till it closes in;