Page:The Dial (Volume 75).djvu/498

424 and serious, passionately fond of reading—history adventure—and geology. He possesses Hugh Millar's works, and when his mother takes a days holiday the two with their dinner in a basket go miles away along the coast and spend the day together on the sands hunting for fossils at that point where there is an old submerged forest, where branches and bits of amber and bones and shells are washed up on the beach. The weather has been very bad since we came, only yesterday we had half a day of calm and sunshine. Monday we spent at Lyne, one of the most charming old towns I have ever seen—one would like to live in it and forget the very name of Progress and be at peace. It is altogether an interesting country, but the Norfolk people are not attractive—they are to my mind the most ungraceful unprepossessing people in England. Here, at Hunstanton, at the height of its short season, the people that fill the place are from Leicester, Bedford, Lincoln and several Midland towns: very few Londoners. They are very nice looking people of Saxon type: the children wonderfully fine-looking, with very light hair, and many of the women large and fine, placid and cow-like for all their blue eyes. They are of course the well-to-do people of the towns they come from, Hunstanton being an expensive place to stay at. You are, I am afraid, more interested in humans than in birds. 'Tis the other way about with me; but I am not well enough to go the long distances one needs to walk to see the shore birds properly. A few days ago there were a few small flocks of sandpipers, at different points along the beach where we were walking—knots, dunlins, dotterell (dotterel) and [?]. We stood some time watching one small flock at a distance of forty yards. I remarked to my wife that they were always very tame when they arrived at this season on the British coast, on their way back from the arctic regions: "If you want to see their wingmarkings you must make them fly." So she walked to them and got to within eight yards before they rose up and flew a few yards off and alighted again. There is no shooting yet here, and one would think that man and birds had made peace.

I'm rather ashamed to send you this long screed about nothing. I daresay we shall be a week longer here. I've had no proofs yet.

Kindest regards to Mrs. Garnett and David.

Yours