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Page 54:-
windows in it, looking desperately out to Scotland as if for
help, which said it was a Bazaar (and it ought to know), and
where you might buy anything you wanted - supposing what you
wanted, was a little camp-stool or a child's wheelbarrow.
The brook crawled or stopped between the houses and the sea,
and the donkey was always running away, and when he got into
the brook he was pelted out with stones, which never hit
him, and which always hit some of the children who were
upside down on the public buildings, and made their
lamentations louder. This donkey was the public excitement
of Allonby, and probably supported at the public expense.
The foregoing descriptions, delivered in separate items, on
separate days of adventurous discovery, Mr. Goodchild
severally wound up, by looking out of the window, looking in
again, and saying, "But there is the sea, and here are the
shrimps - let us eat 'em."
There were fine sunsets at Allonby when the low flat beach,
with its pools of water and its dry patches, changed into
long bars of silver and gold in various states of
burnishing, and there were fine views - on fine days - of
the Scottish coast. But, when it rained at Allonby, Allonby
thrown back upon its ragged self, became a kind of place
which the donkey seemed to have found out, and to have his
highly sagacious reasons for wishing to bolt from. Thomas
Idle observed, too, that Mr. Goodchild, with a noble show of
disinterestedness, became every day more ready to walk to
Maryport and back, for letters; and suspicions began to
harbour in the mind of Thomas, that his friend deceived him,
and that Maryport was a preferable place.
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Therefore, Thomas said to Francis on a day when they had
looked at the sea and eaten the shrimps, "My mind misgives
me, Goodchild, that you go to Maryport, like the boy in the
story-book, to ask it to be idle with you."
"Judge, then," returned Francis, adopting the style of the
story-book, "with what success. I go to a region which is a
bit of water-side Bristol, with a slice of Wapping, a
seasoning of Wolverhampton, and a garnish of Portsmouth, and
I say, 'Will you come and be idle with me?' And it
answers, 'No; for I am a great deal too vaporous, and a
great deal too rusty, and a great deal too muddy, and a
great deal too dirty altogether; and
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