The path was one that had never been touched by a professional pathmaker.  Feet, not hands, had made it.  The rocks impatiently thrust it aside every little way, and here and there were steps up and down for no reason except that the rock would have it so.  The path chose its way so that you might see the sea from every inch of it.  The thundering headlands sprang from Jay’s left hand, and she could see the cliffs written over with strange lines, and the shadow that they cast upon deep water.  It was the colour of a great passion, and against that colour pink foxgloves bowed dramatically upon the fringe of space.  The white gulls were in the valleys of the sea.  I wish colour could be built by words.  I wish I could speak colour to myself in the dark.  I can never fill my eyes full enough of the colour of the sea, nor my ears of the crying of the seagulls.  I am most greedy of these things, and take no thought 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—­squillions of years ago,” said the eldest child.  “You tell them as if they happened yesterday.  Doesn’t it seem as if all the happiest things happened yesterday?”