"But it needn't be until night," said he, evidently loth to part from his ladies. "If I get back to Falmouth by daylight to-morrow morning, master will be quite satisfied. I can take you wherever you like to-day."
"And the horse?"
"Oh, he shall get a good feed and a rest till the middle of the night, then he'll do well enough. We shall have the old moon after one o'clock to get home by. Between Penzance and Falmouth it's a good road, though rather lonely."
I should think it was, in the "wee hours" by the dim light of a waning3 moon. But Charles seemed to care nothing about it, so we said no more, but decided4 to take the drive—our last drive.
Our minds were perplexed5 between Botallack Mine, the Gurnard's Head, Lamorna Cove6, and several other places, which we were told we must on no account miss seeing, the first especially. Some of us, blessed with scientific relatives, almost dreaded7 returning home without having seen a single Cornish mine; others, lovers of scenery, longed for more of that magnificent coast. But finally, a meek8 little voice carried the day.
"I was so disappointed—more than I liked to say—when it rained, and I couldn't get my shells for our bazaar9. How shall I ever get them now? If it wouldn't trouble anybody very much, mightn't we go again to Whitesand Bay?"
A plan not wholly without charm. It was a heavenly day; to spend it in delicious idleness on that wide sweep of sunshiny sand would be a rest for the next day's fatigue10. Besides, consolatory11 thought! there would be no temptation to put on miners' clothes, and go dangling12 in a basket down to the heart of the earth, as the Princess of Wales was reported to have done. The pursuit of knowledge may be delightful14, but some of us owned to a secret preference for terra firma and the upper air. We resolved to face opprobrium15, and declare boldly we had "no time" (needless to add no inclination) to go and see Botallack Mine. The Gurnard's Head cost us a pang16 to miss; but then we should catch a second view of the Land's End. Yes, we would go to Whitesand Bay.
It was a far shorter journey in sunshine than in rain, even though we made various divergencies for blackberries and other pleasures. Never had the sky looked bluer or the sea brighter, and much we wished that we could have wandered on in dreamy peace, day after day, or even gone through England, gipsy-fashion, in a house upon wheels, which always seemed to me the very ideal of travelling.
We reached Sennen only too soon. Pretty little Sennen, with its ancient church and its new school house, where the civil schoolmaster gave me some ink to write a post-card for those to whom even the post-mark "Sennen" would have a touching17 interest, and where the boys and girls, released for dinner, were running about. Board school pupils, no doubt, weighted with an amount of learning which would have been appalling18 to their grandfathers and grandmothers, the simple parishioners of the "fine young fellow" half a century ago. As we passed through the village with its pretty cottages and "Lodgings19 to Let," we could not help thinking what a delightful holiday resort this would be for a large small family, who could be turned out as we were when the carriage could no farther go, on the wide sweep of green common, gradually melting into silvery sand, so fine and soft that it was almost a pleasure to tumble down the slopes, and get up again, shaking yourself like a dog, without any sense of dirt or discomfort20. What a paradise for children, who might burrow21 like rabbits and wriggle22 about like sand-eels, and never come to any harm!
Without thought of any danger, we began selecting our bathing-place, shallow enough, with long strips of wet shimmering23 sand to be crossed before reaching even the tiniest waves; when one of us, the cautious one, appealed to an old woman, the only human being in sight.
"Bathe?" she said. "Folks ne'er bathe here. 'Tain't safe."
"Why not? Quicksands?"
She nodded her head. Whether she understood us or not, or whether we quite understood her, I am not sure, and should be sorry to libel such a splendid bathing ground—apparently25. But maternal26 wisdom interposed, and the girls yielded. When, half an hour afterwards, we saw a solitary27 figure moving on a distant ledge13 of rock, and a black dot, doubtless a human head, swimming or bobbing about in the sea beneath—maternal wisdom was reproached as arrant28 cowardice29. But the sand was delicious, the sea-wind so fresh, and the sea so bright, that disappointment could not last. We made an encampment of our various impedimenta, stretched ourselves out, and began the search for shells, in which every arm's-length involved a mine of wealth and beauty.
Never except at one place, on the estuary30 of the Mersey, have I seen a beach made up of shells so lovely in colour and shape; very minute; some being no bigger than a grain of rice or a pin's head. The collecting of them was a fascination31. We forgot all the historical interests that ought to have moved us, saw neither Athelstan, King Stephen, King John, nor Perkin Warbeck, each of whom is said to have landed here—what were they to a tiny shell, like that moralised over by Tennyson in "Maud"—"small, but a work divine"? I think infinite greatness sometimes touches one less than infinite littleness—the exceeding tenderness of Nature, or the Spirit which is behind Nature, who can fashion with equal perfectness a
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