Stories Of The Sea by Diana Secker Tesdell

Both rooms were plastered and whitewashed ? the plaster laid directly upon the earth walls, as it used to be in dugouts.

This basement was divided into a dining-room at the right of the stairs and a kitchen at the left. I picked up my shoes and stockings and followed her through the living-room and down a flight of stairs into a basement. ?Down to the kitchen? struck me as curious it was always ?out in the kitchen? at home. ?But first you come down to the kitchen with me, and have a nice warm bath behind the stove. ?Here are your clean clothes,? she went on, stroking my coverlid with her brown hand as she talked. Then in a very different tone she said, as if to herself, ?My, how you do look like your father!? I remembered that my father had been her little boy she must often have come to wake him like this when he overslept.

?Had a good sleep, Jimmy? she asked briskly. She had been crying, I could see, but when I opened my eyes she smiled, peered at me anxiously, and sat down on the foot of my bed. A tall woman, with wrinkled brown skin and black hair, stood looking down at me I knew that she must be my grandmother. I was lying in a little room, scarcely larger than the bed that held me, and the window-shade at my head was flapping softly in a warm wind. I do not remember our arrival at my grandfather?s farm sometime before daybreak, after a drive of nearly twenty miles with heavy work-horses. DIANA SECKER TESDELL is the editor of fifteen Everyman's Pocket Classics anthologies, including Christmas Stories, Love Stories, Dog Stories, Cat Stories, Horse Stories, New York Stories, Bedtime Stories, Stories of Art and Artists, Stories of Fatherhood, Stories of Motherhood, Stories of the Sea, Shaken and Stirred: Intoxicating Stories, Wedding Stories, and Stories from the Kitchen, as well as the Pocket Poets anthology Lullabies and Poems for Children.

Stories Of The Sea by Diana Secker Tesdell