Monitress Merle: Complete

The warm, mellow September sunshine was streaming over the irregular roofs and twisted chimneysof the little town of Chagmouth, and was glinting on the water in the harbour, and sendinggleaming, straggling, silver lines over the deep reflections of the shipping moored by the side of thejetty. The rising tide, lapping slowly and gently in from the ocean, was floating the boats beached onthe shingle, and was gradually driving back the crowd of barefooted children who had ventured outin search of mussels, and was sending them, shrieking with mirth, scampering up the seaweedcovered 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 theafternoon 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 andMerle looked at the scene around with that sense of rejoicing proprietorship with which we are wontto revisit the pet place of our adoption. It was two whole months since they had been inChagmouth, and as they both considered the little town to be the absolute hub of the universe it wasreally a great event to find themselves once more in its familiar streets. They had spent the summerholidays with their father and mother in the north, and had come back to Durracombe just in timefor the reopening of school. On this first Saturday after their return to Devonshire they hadmotored with Uncle David to his branch surgery at Chagmouth, and were looking forward to severalhours of amusement while he visited his patients at the sanatorium