ll to the shore,
between the churchyard wall--there's a heap of greyish silvery-looking
stuff, by the way, growing on the coping--something like lavender, with
yellow blossoms--Where was I? Oh yes, and on the other side of the road
there's a tall hedge with elms above it. It breaks off where the road
takes a bend around and in front of the churchyard gate, with a yard or
two of turf on the side towards the water, and from the turf a clean drop
of three feet, or a little less, on to the foreshore. The foreshore is
all grey stones, round and flat, the sort you'd choose to play what's
called ducks-and-drakes. It goes curving along, and the road with it,
until the beach ends with a spit of rock, and over the rock a kind of
cottage (only bigger, but thatched and whitewashed just like a cottage)
with a garden, and in the garden a laburnum in flower, leaning slantwise,"
--Sir John raised his open hand and bent his forefinger to indicate the
angle--"and behind the cottage a reddish cliff with a few clumps of furze
overhanging it, and the turf on it stretching up to a larch plantation
. . . ."

Sir John paused and rubbed his forehead meditatively.

"At least," he resumed, "I _think_ it's a larch plantation; but the scene
gets confused above a certain height. It's the foreshore, and the church
and the cottage that I always see clearest. Yes, and I forgot to tell
you--I'm a poor hand at description--that there's a splash of whitewash on
the spit of rock, and an iron ring fixed there, for warping-in a vessel,
maybe: and sometimes there's a boat, out on the water. . . ."

"You describe it vividly enough," said Mr. Molesworth as Sir John paused
and, apparently on the point of resuming his story, checked himself,
tossed his cigar out of the window, and chose a fresh one from his
pocket-case. "Well, and what happens in your dream?"

Sir John struck a match, puffed his fresh cigar alight, deliberately
examined the ignited end, and flung the match away. "Nothing happens.
I told you it was just a scene, didn't I?"

"You said that somehow the dream was an unpleasant one."

"So I did. So it is. It makes me damnably uncomfortable every time I
dream it; though for the life of me I can't tell you why."

"The picture as you draw it seems to me quite a pleasant one."

"So it is, again."

"And you say nothing happens?"

"Well--" Sir John took the cigar from his mouth and looked at it--
"nothing ever happens in it, definitely: