Monitress Merle

From the book:The warm, mellow September sunshine was streaming over the irregular roofs and twisted chimneys of the little town of Chagmouth, and was glinting on the water in the harbour, and sending gleaming, straggling, silver lines over the deep reflections of the shipping moored by the side of the jetty. The rising tide, lapping slowly and gently in from the ocean, was floating the boats beached on the shingle, and was gradually driving back the crowd of barefooted children who had ventured out in search of mussels, and was sending them, shrieking with mirth, scampering up the seaweed-covered steps that led to the fish market. On the crag-top above the town the corn had been cut, and harvesters were busy laying the sheaves together in stooks. The yellow fields shone in the afternoon light as if the hill were crowned with gold. Walking along the narrow cobbled path that led past the harbour and up on to the cliff, Mavis and Merle looked at the scene around with that sense of rejoicing proprietorship with which we are wont to revisit the pet place of our adoption. It was two whole months since they had been in Chagmouth, and as they both considered the little town to be the absolute hub of the universe it was really a great event to find themselves once more in its familiar streets. They had spent the summer holidays with their father and mother in the north, and had come back to Durracombe just in time for the reopening of school.

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