I wished, almost impatiently, for my own part, that it might all have
happened differently; that I might leave everything in Wallencamp just as
I had found it, so delightfully happy and peaceful it had seemed to me.
I could not bear, in looking back, to think of one face as wearing upon
it any unaccustomed grief. At all events, I felt that my thoughts had
been helplessly turned from their prescribed channel, and the fisherman's
letter remained from day to day still unanswered.
Meanwhile, winter was vanishing at the Cape. As salient points in its
quaint and cherished memory, I recall the frequent clamming excursions,
when we rattled own to the beach, at low-tide, in a cart whose groaning
members lacked every element of elasticity. Often there were as many as
sixteen persons in one cart, and the same number of hoes and baskets--the
baskets being filled with small children as a means of keeping both them
and the children stationary.
Grandma was always present on these occasions, and the hilarity of the
Wallencampers, as they were jounced and joggled over the stones, in a
manner which to some might have been productive of great bodily agony,
concealed, with them, no undercurrent of nervous dread or pain.
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