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"I hope you are right, Mary, for we both shall be glad to welcome our dear ones home again." But soon afterward the big bluff Squire came riding up, as was his wont, to where Mary stood by her garden, and he at once asked, "Pray tell me, dear, though much I fear The answer sad I know, How grow the sturdy cockle-shells And cowslips, all in a row?"
"Why, just this, sweetheart," returned the sailor gravely; "all the time that it takes the cowslips and dingle-bells and cockle-shells to sprout from the ground, and grow big and strong, and blossom into flower, and, yes to wither and die away again all that time shall your brothers and I sail the seas.
I remember a doorway of a cottage by the sea, where the moulding which made a part of the frame was an orderly line of carved cockle-shells, used as a border, and this little touch of recognition of its sea-neighbours was not only decorative in itself, but gave even the chance visitor a sort of interpretation of the spirit of the interior life.
"She has copied it wrong," he said; "the word is 'seagreen. 'And on its sea-green bosom sailed a fleet of silver cockle-shells, wafted by the breath of those not in themselves driven by the wind of need. The voyage of these silver cockle-shells, all heading across each other's bows, was, in fact, the advanced movement of that time.
Outside, cockle-shells were piled against the wall; then there were ditches or streamlets cutting through profuse and almost loathsome vegetation, and shining slime fat and iridescent, swarming with loathsome forms of insect and reptile life all rioting under the fierce sun, and among them, almost odious by proximity to such vileness, were small crabs with shells of a heavenly blue.
Then we peeled the sticks. They were nice and white at first, but they soon got dirty when we carried them. It is a curious thing: however often you wash your hands they always seem to come off on anything white. And we nailed paper rosettes to the tops of them. That was the nearest we could get to cockle-shells. 'And we may as well have them there as on our hats, Alice said.
Caligula, on the other hand, when he marched his soldiers to the beach, made them fill their helmets with cockle-shells, and sent the shells to be placed in the Capitol as trophies of his conquests, did no great harm to anybody; but he surely proved that he was quite incapable of governing an empire. Mr Pitt's expedition to Quiberon was most ill judged, and ended in defeat and disgrace.
I very much suspect the real reason they are dying is because the cold sea wind caught them last night. Dingle-bells are delicate. If you had scattered the cockle-shells and cowslips all about them, the stronger plants would have protected the weaker; but you see, my girl, you planted the dingle-bells all in a row, and so the wind caught them nicely."
"And gather cockle-shells, with Dan Cupid to aid you," said Varney. "How mean you by that, Varney?" said the Earl somewhat hastily. "Nay, my lord," said Varney, "be not angry with me.
She played amongst the rotting, weed-grown stakes of an old pier, and "fancied" rooms among them suites of rooms in which she would lodge her brothers and sister if they came to visit her, and where with cockle-shells for teacups, and lava for vegetables, and fucus-pods for fish they should find themselves as much enchanted as Beauty in the palace of the Beast.
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