he sea; and certainly it is
more Italian than English in atmosphere and colouring, only it is
perfectly clean, as clean as a toy, or a Dutch village; so _that_ part
of the "atmosphere" isn't entirely Italian! I even saw waste-paper pots;
and if that isn't like Broek in Waterland, what is? Down in the harbour,
the fishing boats lay like a flock of resting birds; and as we descended
the cobbled steps of the street, to go to the shore, the early morning
donkeys began to come up, laden with heavy bags and panniers, just as
you and I saw them in Italy, and driven by just such boys and old men as
I remember there, dark-eyed, picturesque, one or two with red caps. The
doors of the little low-browed houses huddled on either side opened here
and there, up and down the path, giving glimpses of pretty, neat
interiors; bits of old furniture, the glint of a copper kettle, a brass
jug, or a bit of mended blue china. A gossipy Devonshire cat came out
and begged for caresses, mewing the news of the night--such a chatty
creature!--and down on the beach, we made friends with the oldest man of
the village, born in 1816. He was a handsome old fellow, with pathetic,
faded eyes in a tanned, ruddy face; and the queer little harbour
(everything is little at Clovelly, except the inhabitants) with its
rustic sort of pier, and red-sailed fishing boats, looked as if it had
been designed entirely as a background for him. However, it's much more
antique even than he--six hundred years old, instead of something short
of a hundred, and made by the famous Carey family. We stopped there
talking to the ancient sailor-man, hearing how the Clovelly fishermen go
out with black nets by day in good weather, and at night with white
ones, to "attract the fish." "That is trew, Miss," said he, when I
laughed, thinking it a joke. I love the Devonshire way of saying "true,"
and other words that rhyme. Their soft voices are as gentle, as kindly,
as the murmur of their own blue sea.

As we mounted the ladder-like path to the top of Clovelly, to go back to
Apollo again, the sun came up out of the sea, where the blue line of
water marked the edge of the world, and spilt floods of gold over it,
like a tilted christening cup. We turned and stood still to watch the
day born of dawn; and I feel sure that if we had come to Clovelly to
spend several weeks, I could never have learned to know the place as I
had divined it, in this adventure. You seem to learn more about a flowe