1 He remembered, the house by the sea.
2 "Once there was no sea," said Mrs. Swithin.
3 No sea at all between us and the continent.
4 Sweet and low; sweet and low, wind of the western sea.
5 Hearing the waves in the middle of the night he saddled a horse and rode to the sea.
6 I'm no castaway, I'd have you know, Sir; no fishtailed mermaid with a robe of sea weed, at your mercy.
7 An only child, left by your brother, so I've heard, in your Ladyship's charge--him that perished at sea.
8 Alone, under a tree, the withered tree that keeps all day, murmuring of the sea, and hears the Rider gallop.
9 They were bringing up nets full of fish from the sea; but Isa was seeing--the garden, variable as the forecast said, in the light breeze.
10 You can't expect it brought to your door in a pail of water," said Mrs. Swithin, "as I remember when we were children, living in a house by the sea.
11 But the brig, frigate or what they call it, for I've no head for sea terms, never crossed a ditch without saying the Lord's Prayer backwards, struck a rock.
12 Sitting on the bed he heard her sing, swinging her little legs, "Come and see my sea weeds, come and see my sea shells, come and see my dicky bird hop upon its perch"--an old child's nursery rhyme to help a child.
13 Brother Bob, for my father was a plain country gentleman and would have none of the fancy names the foreigners brought with 'em--Asphodilla I call myself, but my Christian name's plain Sue--Brother Bob, as I was telling you, ran away to sea; and, so they say, became Emperor of the Indies; where the very stones are emeralds and the sheep-crop rubies.'
14 The roof was weathered red-orange; and inside it was a hollow hall, sun-shafted, brown, smelling of corn, dark when the doors were shut, but splendidly illuminated when the doors at the end stood open, as they did to let the wagons in--the long low wagons, like ships of the sea, breasting the corn, not the sea, returning in the evening shagged with hay.