Authors -- Fiction; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Martians -- Fiction; Paris (France) -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
We do, and do ourselves uncommonly well also; and afterwards we take
a boat, we four (if the tide serves), and row up for a mile or so to
a certain dam at Ruswarp, and there we take another boat on a lovely
little secluded river, which is quite independent of tides, and
where for a mile or more the trees bend over us from either side as
we leisurely paddle along and watch the leaping salmon-trout,
pulling now and then under a drooping ash or weeping-willow to gaze
and dream or chat, or read out loud from _Sylvia's Lovers_; Sylvia
Robson once lived in a little farm-house near Upgang, which we know
well, and at Whitby every one reads about Sylvia Robson; or else we
tell stories, or inform each other what a jolly time we're having,
and tease old Chucker-out, who gets quite excited, and we admire the
discretion with which he disposes of his huge body as ballast to
trim the boat, and remains perfectly still in spite of his
excitement for fear he should upset us. Indeed, he has been learning
all his life how to behave in boats, and how to get in and out of
them.
And so on till tea-time at five, and we remember there's a little
inn at Sleights, where the scones are good; or, better still, a
leafy garden full of raspberry-bushes at Cock Mill, where they give
excellent jam with your tea, and from which there are three ways of
walking back to Whitby when there's not enough water to row--and
which is the most delightful of those three ways has never been
decided yet.
Then from the stone pier we watch a hundred brown-sailed Cornish
fishing-smacks follow each other in single file across the harbor
bar and go sailing out into the west as the sun goes down--a most
beautiful sight, of which Marty feels all the mystery and the charm
and the pathos, and Chips all the jollity and danger and romance.
Then to the trap, and home all four of us _au grand trot_, between
the hedge-rows and through the splendid woods of Castle Rohan; there
at last we find all the warmth and light and music and fun of
Marsfield, and many good things besides: supper, dinner, tea--all in
one; and happy, healthy, hungry, indefatigable boys and girls who've
been trapesing over miles and miles of moor and fell, to beautiful
mills and dells and waterfalls--too many miles for slender Marty or
little Chips; or even Bob and Chucker-out--who weigh thirty-two
stone between them, and are getting lazy in their old age, and fat
and scant of breath.
Whitby is an ideal place for young people; it almost makes old
people feel young themselves there when the young are about; there
is so much to do.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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