“No Kit, no toys. I think children don’t need their toys at the beach.”
So said Kit’s mother.
Poor little Kit laid down the armful she had fetched to the trunks. “How
will I ’muse me?” said she mournfully.
“O,” said her mother cheerfully, “there is a wonderful seashore plaything
which I shall buy you.”
All the way Kit thought about this “plaything.” It proved to be a little
blue wooden pail and a spoon.
Kit had never seen outdoors sand before. “Nurse,” said she, “Is this sand
all sc’ubbing sand?”
[Illustration: KIT AND HER PRECIOUS PAIL.]
The little blue pail was truly a “wonderful plaything.” Kit forgot
doll-house and dolls. She was world-building—mountains and caves and
rivers and seas; wells and “little homes” for star-fish and sand-crabs;
great treasure-vaults for shells and pebbles; gardens of sea-weed.
Other children had sand-pails. Some days they toiled in company, and
built long lines of forts. Other days they built large cities. One boy
dug a deep well and called it an “oil well.” He sunk a small tin cup of
kerosene in it and put in rags and set it afire with a match, and the
whole little crowd jumped up and down and shouted. But Kit’s mother and
other mothers put it out and said it was wrong.
On the last day of all Kit filled her pail with “sc’ubbing sand” to carry
home.
_Louise Kendrick._