CHAPTER XI 



A Family Gathering on the Cornish Coast Bank Holiday 



Travellers 



THERE can be but one good answer to " Where shall 

 the shoots and offshoots of a family assemble for 

 Christmas ? " ; but where they shall foregather for a 

 summer holiday is not easily settled when they are 

 almost numerous enough to colonise a village. It 

 is sometimes difficult to get them together for a 

 lengthy period but I have found it possible to indulge 

 my taste in this direction and have secured a 

 goodly company, for three weeks at a time, of my 

 sons and daughters, together with the wives or 

 husbands and the children that time has brought 

 to them. 



Such holidays linger long in the memory but I 

 have not to go far back nor to make much call upon 

 my recollections to describe a typical to me, ideal 

 holiday so spent. 



It was somewhat in the nature of an invasion 

 upon the quiet little cluster of cottages that go to 

 make the village of Porthoustock, near St Keverne, 

 in Cornwall, when the 'bus from Helston deposited 

 our company of fourteen upon well ! it must be its 

 main street. Some forewarning the inhabitants had 

 received and homes had been provided for nearly all 

 of us, so that there was not blank dismay upon the 

 faces of those who had come out of doors to greet 

 the coming of the 'bus that forms with the Great 

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