for the
morrow, so that if my morrow dawns darkly I have nothing stored away to
comfort me.

The path joins the more civilised road almost at the door of the House by
the Sea. You tumble over a great round rock that still bears the marks
of the sea's fingers, and you are at the door.

The house was full of sunlight. Great panels of sunlight lay across the
air. The fingers of the honeysuckle in the rough painted bowl by the
window caught and held sunlight. In every room of the house you can
always hear the eternal march of the sea up and down the shore. Nothing
ever drowns that measured confusion. Sometimes the voices of friends
thread in and out of it, sometimes the dogs bark, or a coming meal clinks
in the stone passage, or you can catch the squealing of the children in
their baths, sometimes your heart stops beating to listen to the speech
of the ghosts that haunt the house, but no sound ever usurps the throne
of the sea.

They were all on the stairs, the Secret Friend and the children. They all
wore untidy clothes, and hard-boiled eggs bulged from their pockets. The
Secret Friend has red hair, you might call its colour vulgar. But Jay
likes it very much. He hardly ever sits still, you can never see him
think, he has a way of answering you almost before you have finished
speaking. His mind always seems to be exploring among words, and
sometimes you can hear him telling himself splendid sentences without
meaning. For this reason everything connected with him has a name, from
his dog, which is called Trelawney, to the last cigarette he smokes at
night, which is called Isobel. This trick Jay has imported into her own
establishment: she has an umbrella called Macdonald, and a little
occasional pleurisy pain under one rib, which she introduces to the
Family as Julia.

The children in the house were just those very children that every woman
hopes, or has hoped, to have for her own.

They were just starting for a walk, and the Secret Friend was
finishing a story.

"How can you remember things that happened--I suppose-