t first he
wondered what had happened. The window seemed to be in the ceiling,
and the ceiling sloped down to the walls, and all the furniture had
gone astray into wrong positions. Then he remembered, jumped out of
bed, and drew the blind.

He saw a blue line of sea, so clearly drawn that the horizon might
have been a string stretched from the corner eaves to the snow-white
light-house standing on the farthest spit of land; blue sea and
yellow sand curving round it, with a white edge of breakers; inshore,
the sand rising to a cliff ridged with grassy hummocks; farther
inshore, the hummocks united and rolling away up to inland downs, but
broken here and there on their way with scars of sand; over all,
white gulls wheeling. He could hear the nearest ones mewing as they
sailed over the house.

Taffy had seen the sea once before, at Dawlish, on the journey to
Tewkesbury; and again on the way home. But here it was bluer
altogether, and the sands were yellower. Only he felt disappointed
that no ship was in sight, nor any dwelling nearer than the
light-house and the two or three white cottages behind it.
He dressed in a hurry and said his prayers, repeating at the close,
as he had been taught to do, the first and last verses of the Morning
Hymn:

"Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run;
Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise
To pay thy morning sacrifice.

"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

He ran downstairs. In this queer house the stairs led right down
into the kitchen. The front door, too, opened into the kitchen,
which was really a slate-paved hall, with a long table set between
the doorway and the big open hearth. The floor was always strewn
with sand; there was no trouble about this, for the wind blew plenty
under the door.

Taffy found the table laid, and his mother busily slicing bread for
his bread and milk. He begged for a hot cake from the hearth, and
ran out of doors to eat it. Humility lifted the latch for him, for
the cake was so hot that he had to pass it from hand to hand.

Outside, the wind came upon him with a clap on the shoulder, quite
as if it had been a comrade waiting.

Taffy ran down the path and out upon the sandy hummocks, setting his
face to the wind and the roar of the sea, keeping his