eBooks Base 2000

To run would circulate her blood, warm her through and
keep her gallant humour up; still she had to own she found this heavy
going, for her feet were numb and the sand seemed to pluck at and weigh
them down. Her run slackened to a walk. Then she ventured a yard or two
out into the shallow water, hoping there to meet with firmer foothold;
but here it proved altogether too cold. She had the misfortune, moreover,
to tread on the top end of a razor shell, buried upright, which cut the
skin making her limp from pain and sharpness of smarting. So perforce,
she took to the deep blown sand again above high-water mark, and ploughed
along slowly enough in growing weariness and discomfort.
Never, surely, was any half-mile so long as this between the place of her
farewell to the mottled stilt-legged birds and subsequent sleeping, and
the place where she left her hat and shoes and stockings! In the dimness
and chill of the falling mist, it seemed to lengthen and lengthen to an
altogether incomprehensible extent.


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