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How Diamond Got There 101
" I always get out with both at once," said his father, laughing.
" Well, listen then. His aunt wants the boy to go down and see her."
"And that's why you want to make out that he ain't looking well."
" No more he is. I think he had better go."
"Well, I don't care, if you can find the money," said his father.
"I'll manage that," said his mother; and so it was agreed that Diamond should go to Sandwich.
I will not describe the preparations Diamond made. You would have thought he had been going on a three months' voyage. Nor will I describe the journey, for our business is now at the place. He was met at the station by his aunt, a cheerful middle-aged woman, and conveyed in safety to the sleepy old town, as his father had called it. And no wonder that it was sleepy, for it was nearly dead of old age.
Diamond went about staring with his beautiful goggle-eyes, at the quaint old streets, and the shops, and the houses. Everything looked very strange, indeed; for here was a town abandoned by its nurse, the sea, like an old oyster left on the shore till it gaped for weariness. It used to be one of the five chief seaports in England, but it began to hold itself too high, and the consequence was the sea grew less and less intimate with it, gradually drew back, and kept more to itself, till at length it left it high and dry: Sandwich was a seaport no more; the sea went on with its own tide-business a long way off, and forgot |
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