"Jenny."
"Then we should have lost Jenny."
This being so, Jenny promises solemnly not to play with any mine that comes ashore, nor to let Richard Henry play with it, nor to allow it to play with Richard Henry, nor—
"I suppose I may just point it out to him and say, 'Look, that's a mine'?" says Jenny wistfully. If she can't do this, it doesn't seem to be much use coming to the seaside at all.
"I don't think there would be any harm in that," says Father. "But don't engage it in conversation."
"Thank you very much," says Jenny, and she and Richard Henry go off together.
Mother watches them anxiously. Father closes his eyes.
"Now," says Jenny eagerly, "I'm going to show you a darling little crab. Won't that be lovely?"
Richard Henry, having been deceived, as he feels, about the sea, is not too hopeful about that crab. However, he asks politely, "What's a crab?"
"You'll see directly, darling," says Jenny; and he has to be content with that.
"Crab," he murmurs to himself.
Suddenly an idea occurs to him. He lets go of Jenny's hand and trots up to an old gentleman with white whiskers.
"Going to see a crab," he announces.
"Going to see a crab, are you, my little man?" says the old gentleman kindly.
"Going to see a crab," says Richard Henry, determined to keep up his end of the conversation.
"Well, I never! So you're going to see a crab!" says the old gentleman, doing his best with it.
Richard Henry nods two or three times. "Going to see a crab," he says firmly.
Luckily Jenny comes up and rescues him, otherwise they would still be at it. "Come along, darling, and see the crab," she says, picking up his hand; and Richard Henry looks triumphantly at the old gentleman. There you are. Perhaps he will believe a fellow another time.
Jenny has evidently made an arrangement with a particular crab for this afternoon. It is to be hoped that the appointment will be kept, for she has hurried Richard Henry past all sorts of wonderful things which he wanted to stop with for a little. But the thought of this lovely crab, which Jenny thinks so much of, forbids protest. Quite right not to keep it waiting. What will it be like? Will it be bigger than the sea?
We have reached the rendezvous. We see now that we need not have been in such a hurry.
"There!" says Jenny excitedly. "Isn't he a darling little crab? He's asleep." (That's why we need not have hurried.)
Richard Henry says nothing. He can't think of the words for what he is feeling. What he wants to say is that Jenny has let him down again. They passed a lot of these funny little things on their way here, but Jenny wouldn't stop because she was going to show him a Crab, a great, big, enormous darling little Crab—which might have been anything—and now it's only just this. No wonder the old gentleman didn't believe him.
Swindled—that's the word he wants. However, he can't think of it for the moment, so he tries something else.
"Darling little crab," he says.
They leave the dead crab there and hurry back.
"What shall I show you now?" says Jenny.
Golden Memories
When Memory with its scorn of ages, Its predilection for the past, Turns back about a billion pages And lands us by the Cam at last; Is it the thought of "Granta" (once our daughter), The Freshers' Match, the Second in our Mays That makes our mouth, our very soul to water? Ah no! Ah no! It is the Salmon Mayonnaise!
The work we did was rarely reckoned Worthy a tutor's kindly word— (For when I said we got a Second I really meant we got a Third)— The games we played were often tinged with bitter, Amidst the damns no faintest hint of praise Greeted us when we missed the authentic "sitter"— But thou wert always kind, O Salmon Mayonnaise!
Even our nights with "Granta," even The style that, week by blessed week, Mixed Calverley and J.K. Stephen With much that was (I hold) unique, Even our parodies of the Rubáiyát Were disappointing—yes, in certain ways: What genius loves (I mean) the people shy at— Yet no one ever shied at Salmon Mayonnaise!
Alas! no restaurant in London Can make us feel that thrill again; Though what they do or what leave undone I often ask, and ask in vain. Is it the sauce which puts the brand of Cam on Each maddening dish? The egg? The yellow glaze? The cucumber? The special breed of salmon?— I only know we loved, we loved that Mayonnaise!
"Did Beauty," some may ask severely, "Visit him in no other guise? It cannot be that salmon merely Should bring the mist before his eyes! What of the river there where Byron's Pool lay, The warm blue morning shimmering in the haze?" Not this (I say) … Yet something else … Creme Brûlée! Ye gods! to think of that and Salmon Mayonnaise!
The Problem of Life
The noise of the retreating sea came pleasantly to us from a distance. Celia was lying on her—I never know how to put this nicely—well, she was lying face downwards on a rock and gazing into a little pool which the tide had forgotten about and left behind. I sat beside her and annoyed a limpet. Three minutes ago I had taken it suddenly by surprise and with an Herculean effort moved it an eighteenth of a millimetre westwards. My silence since then was lulling it into a false security, and in another two minutes I hoped to get a move on it again.
"Do you know," said Celia with a puzzled look on her face, "sometimes I think I'm quite an ordinary person after all."
"You aren't a little bit," I said lazily; "you're just like nobody else in the world."
"Well, of course, you had to say that."
"No, I hadn't. Lots of husbands would merely have yawned." I felt one coming and stopped it just in time. Waiting for limpets to go to sleep is drowsy work. "But why are you so morbid about yourself suddenly?"
"I don't know," she said. "Only every now and then I find myself thinking the most obvious thoughts."
"We all do," I answered, as I stroked my limpet gently. The noise of our conversation had roused it, but a gentle stroking motion (I am told by those to whom it has confided) will frequently cause its muscles to relax. "The great thing is not to speak them. Still, you'd better tell me now. What is it?"
"Well," she said, her cheeks perhaps a little pinker than usual, "I was just thinking that life was very wonderful. But it's a silly thing to say."
"It's holiday time," I reminded her. "The need for sprinkling our remarks with thoughtful words like 'economic' and 'sporadic' is over for a bit. Let us be silly." I scratched in the rock the goal to which I was urging my limpet and took out my watch. "Three thirty–five. I shall get him there by four."
Celia was gazing at two baby fishes who played in and out a bunch of sea–weed. Above the seaweed an anemone sat fatly.
"I suppose they're all just as much alive as we are," she said thoughtfully. "They marry"—I looked at my limpet with a new interest—"and bring up families and go about their business, and it all means just as much to them as it does to us."
"My limpet's business affairs mean nothing to me," I said firmly. "I am only wrapped up in him as a sprinter."
"Aren't you going to try to move him again?"
"He's not quite ready yet. He still has his suspicions."
Celia dropped into silence. Her next question showed that she had left the pool for a moment.
"Are there any people in Mars?" she asked.
"People down here say that there aren't. A man told me the other day that he knew this for a fact. On the other hand, people in Mars know for a fact that there isn't anybody on the Earth. Probably they are both wrong."