SOUTH SHORE 165 



After that, the boys found a refuge in the bushes, 

 and on warm days appeared in the water as 

 by magic. A low gravel ridge, undercut by the 

 storm waves, rose from the narrow beach. It 

 was covered with scraggy oaks overgrown with 

 entangling vines, and here, cold from our bath- 

 ing, we used to pile up drift-wood and brush, and 

 in the grateful blaze of our crackling fire come 

 back to summer. 



Then we boiled our coffee and roasted our 

 corn, gotten, for a price, fresh off the stalk from the 

 green garden acres to the west. We burned it 

 of course, but it tasted the better. We burned 

 our faces too, but never did we mind ! 



On gala occasions, such as the big boy's birth- 

 day, which we always celebrated here, marsh- 

 mallows were added to the menu, to be roasted 

 on sharpened sticks to a fine brown, and taken 

 off in one melting ambrosial mouthful. 



The need of water for our coffee or to quench 

 our marsh -mallow thirst would give us our old 

 glad excuse for going to hear the parrot talk 

 German, to our never-failing merriment. It is 

 really nothing surprising that a German's parrot 

 should talk German but to hear it affected us 

 almost to tears. So we filed in procession, pails 

 in hand, through the back gate of the tall blank 



