76 ALONGSHORE n 



life sometimes also crush it away? We are too 

 squeamish over death, too neglectful of life. 

 Separations come all too soon. 



Semaphore has had her illnesses. But that is 

 enough about that. I would have some heavenly 

 drill-sergeant come every day and give her the 

 order, 'As yer wuz ! Stand heasy!' I would 

 like to see her, still a baby, flapping about naked 

 in the wash-tub, this day twenty years. She will 

 be thinking of babies of her own then. One 

 understands why pictures of the Holy Family 

 have such a hold upon the imagination of man- 

 kind when Semaphore is on her mother's lap and 

 her father comes in, all wet from sea, and kisses 

 her, and licks her face like a great dog, and she 

 laughs aloud and drags him to her by the hair. 

 The mother is so full of patience and the 

 consciousness of power, the father of eagerness 

 and the exercise of power, and the child contains 

 in small so much of God knows what, that every 

 attitude, every movement of the three Is at once 

 graceful, cosy and world-wide; delicate and 

 strong. 'Where's Joe?' some one asks. Sema- 

 phore looks towards the fender where the cat 

 sleeps. 'Where's Jim?' She turns round to 

 her father. 'Where's Dad?' She smiles across 



