A DAY BY THE SEA. 
ae. were both big, they were both black, 
they were both untidy; but, though cer- 
tainly neither of them could be regarded 
exactly as an angel of light, they were not 
all bad. There was just a little humorous 
twinkling in their eyes that saved them. 
Though both were alike in their unrelieved 
blackness, with purple reflections, they were 
different in that his feathers ran up to his 
suggestive, gouge-like beak, whereas hers 
stopped at a bare, whitish patch round the 
base of the beak. 
Thus could you know them for mother and 
son; and they were both flying from the 
dried-up, parched inland, where the heat-fog 
screened the view, and dust-banks hid the 
motor-swarmed roads, down to the airy, cool 
roominess of the muddy estuary. 
When you have spent the whole of one par- 
boiled day hammering hopelessly at ground 
which jars you from beak-tip to tail at every 
stroke for grubs you ll never get, and as a last 
chance have passed a stifling evening watching 
in vain for a hen to show you where she keeps 
her stolen nest in the hay-field, and all the 
time have seen your only child starving, you 
