THE LITTLE SAND PAIL.
“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?”
KIT AND HER PRECIOUS PAIL.
KIT AND HER PRECIOUS PAIL.
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.