them to herself, but soon gave it up as useless. She thought: "Here I am; I see it; you don't need to tell me about it!" And then she realized that she was alone, knowing in her own mind what it was like, yet unable to stop wishing that she could describe the hollow, ringing sound. Was she becoming homesick? No! it was sheer delight.
For a moment she paused. Then she bounded through the yellow sand, and, ever going faster and faster, she came to the edge of her sea. Her longing had been fulfilled.
This beach was almost overhung at one end by a great shelf of rock. The sand was glistening with shells of all colours and bordered with sea-weeds washed up. Tiny sand-pipers' tracks ran all over it. Eepersip stayed there a long time, gazing into the waves, gazing at everything.
The rock-ledge at one end of the beach had been
catching her eye for some time. She watched how
fearlessly the gulls plunge on quivering wings,
down, down, then rose again, covered with silvery
drops, to fly here and there. Then she would look
back at the little precipice. She thought: "I cannot
fly! They do it from the air, but I cannot. I can
do it from the precipice! Why not? "Then, aloud:
"I will be a bird—I will do it!"
She walked back to the point where the cliff
