. .
This summer was a very hot one; the little garden was stifling and
the glass bottles cracked in the sun.
"I want to get out. I want to get out," cried Maggie-so she went
down to the sea. She went surreptitiously; this was the first
surreptitious thing she had done. She gazed from the Promenade that
began just beyond the little station and ran the length of the town
down upon the sands. The beach was a small one compared with the
great stretches of Merton and Buquay, and the space was covered now
so thickly with human beings that the sand was scarcely visible. It
was a bright afternoon, hot but tempered with a little breeze. The
crowd bathed, paddled, screamed, made sand-castles, lay sleeping,
flirting, eating out of paper bags, reading, quarrelling. Here were
two niggers with banjoes, then a stout lady with a harmonium, then a
gentleman drawing pictures on the sand; here again a man with sweets
on a tray, here, just below Maggie, a funny old woman with a little
hut where ginger-beer and such things were sold. The noise was
deafening; the wind stirred the sand curiously so that it blew up
and about in little wreaths and spirals.
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