"O dear me," said Polly, "now we must run, or we sha'n't have much time
to stay on the beach; and besides, Grandpapa will worry over us if
we're not there."
"We can't run much, loaded down with this," said Jasper, looking at his
armful and laughing, "or we'd likely drop half of them, and smash them
to pieces. Wait a bit, Polly, I'm going to buy you some fruit." They
stopped at the top of the stone stairway leading down to the sands,
where some comely peasant women, fishermen's wives, held great baskets
of fruit, and in one hand was a pair of scales. "Now, then, what will
you have, Polly?"
"Oh, some grapes, please, Jasper," said Polly. "Aren't they most
beautiful?"
"I should say they were; they are black Hamburgs," declared Jasper.
"Now, then, my good woman, give us a couple of pounds." He put down the
coin she asked for, and she weighed them out in her scales, and did
them up in a piece of a Dutch newspaper.
"We are much worse off now, Jasper," laughed Polly, as they got over
the stairs somehow with their burdens, "since we've all these grapes to
carry. O dear me, there goes one!"
"Never mind," said Jasper, looking over his armful of presents, to
investigate his paper of grapes; "if we don't lose but one, we're
lucky."
"And there goes another," announced Polly, as they picked their way
over and through the thick sand.
"Well, I declare," exclaimed old Mr.
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