The darkness and the light to Thee are both alike.
Far away to the west, on the borders of the Sea, there
lived a lady and gentleman in a beautiful old house
built something like a castle. They had several
children, nice little boys and girls, who were far
fonder of their Sea Castle, as they called it, than
of a very pleasant house which they had in a great
town at some distance off. Still they used to
go and be very merry in the Town House in the winter
time when the hail and snow fell, and the winds blew
so cold that nobody could bear to walk out by the
wild sea shore.
But in summer weather the case was quite altered.
Indeed, as soon as ever the sun began to get a little
power, and to warm the panes of glass in the nursery
windows of the Town House, there was a hue and cry
among all the children to be off to their Sea Castle
home, and many a time had Papa and Mamma to send them
angrily out of the room, because they would do nothing
but beg to “set off directly.” They
were always “sure that the weather was getting
quite hot,” and “it must be summer,
for they heard the sparrows chirping every morning
the first thing,” and they “thought they
had seen a swallow,” and “the windows
got so warm with the sunshine, Nurse declared they
were enough to burn one’s fingers:”
and so the poor little things teazed themselves and
everybody else, every year, in their hurry to get back
to their western home. But I dare say you have
heard the old proverb, “One swallow does not
make a summer;” and so it was proved very often
to our friends. For the Spring season is so changeable,
there are often some soft mild days, and then a cruel
frost comes again, and perhaps snow as well; and people
who have boasted about fine weather and put off their
winter clothes, look very foolish.
Still Time passes on; and when May was half over,
the Town House used to echo with shouts of noisy delight,
and boxes were banged down in the passages, and there
was a great calling out for cords, and much scolding
about broken keys and padlocks, and the poor Carpenter
who came to mend the trunks and find new keys to old
locks, was at his wits’ end and his patience’
end too.
But at last the time came when all this bustle was
succeeded by silence in the Town House, for carriages
had rolled away with the happy party, and nobody was
left behind but two or three women servants to clean
out the deserted rooms.
And now then, my little readers, who are, I hope,
wondering what is coming next, you must fancy to yourselves
the old Sea Castle Home. It had two large turrets;
and winding staircases led from the passages and kitchens
underneath the sitting rooms, up to the top of the
turrets, and so out upon the leads of the house, from
which there was the most beautiful view of the Ocean
you ever saw; and, as the top of the house was battlemented,
