emedy.
When the tears ceased the house was very still. Antirosa had decided
it was better to let the children "have their cry out," and the boy
had gone to school. Punch raised his head from the floor and sniffed
mournfully. Judy was nearly asleep. Three short years had not taught
her how to bear sorrow with full knowledge. There was a distant, dull
boom in the air--a repeated heavy thud. Punch knew that sound in
Bombay in the Monsoon. It was the sea--the sea that must be traversed
before anyone could get to Bombay.
"Quick, Ju!" he cried, "we're close to the sea. I can hear it! Listen!
That's where they've went. P'raps we can catch them if we was in time.
They did n't mean to go without us. They've only forgot."
"Iss," said Judy. "They've only forgotted. Less go to the sea."
The hall-door was open and so was the garden-gate.
"It's very, very big, this place," he said, looking cautiously down
the road, "and we will get lost; but I will find a man and order him
to take me back to my house--like I did in Bombay."
He took Judy by the hand, and the two fled hatless in the direction of
the sound of the sea. Downe Villa was almost the last of a range of
newly built houses running out, through a chaos of brick-mounds, to a
heath where gypsies occasionally camped and where the Garrison
Artillery of Rocklington practised. There were few people to be seen,
and the children might have been taken for those of the soldiery, who
ranged far. Half an hour the wearied little legs tramped across
heath, potato-field, and sand-dune.
"I'se so tired," said Judy, "and Mamma will be angry."
"Mamma's never angry. I suppose she is waiting at the sea now while
Papa gets tickets. We'll find them and go along with them. Ju, you
must n't sit down. Only a little more and we'll come to the sea. Ju,
if you sit down I'll thmack you!" said Punch.
They climbed another dune, and came upon the great gray sea at low
tide. Hundreds of crabs were scuttling about the beach, but there was
no trace of Papa and Mamma not even of a ship upon the waters--nothing
but sand and mud for miles and miles.
And "Uncleharri" found them by chance--very muddy and very
forlorn--Punch dissolved in tears, but trying to divert Judy with an
"ickle trab," and Judy wailing to the pitiless horizon for "Mamma,
Mamma!"--and again "Mamma!"
THE SECOND BAG
Ah, well-a-day, for we are souls bereaved!
Of all the creatures under Heaven's wide scope
We a
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