The Shells In Sunshine Box....

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 45, 16 November 1940, Page 16

The Shells In Sunshine Box....

HEAR EVERYBODY,— Last week “Snow Top” sent some magazines for Sunshine Box. Sunshine Box is almost on bursting point—so I put her Health Camp contribution on top of the book-shelf. But soon eight-year-old Jennifer was poking her head-round the doorway. We cannot evade Jenny for very long. She pries into this and that when she comes to visit and asks the strangest questions. They insist on bobbing up whenever she appears—dozens of them. “Like so many hiccoughs,” says Postic with, a sly wink. This morning she pounced on. the. comics. “From Snop Top of Seatoun " she pronounced, gravely reading the small note on top. “Why don’t you put them into Sunshine Box, Kiwi?" There she went! “They won’t squeeze in," I said. She promptly picked up the comics herself and searched the Box for a space. Things started to slip and slide. Assistance was urgently needed. And then, as we both sat on the floor and stacked the piles of puzzles and toys and boxes of stamps a little tighter we found —sonic sea shells. They were knobbly and curved, and there was a smoothness along the edge of them. Everything seems to whisper some special secret that it holds for no one vise's cars. The shells must have whispered lots of things to Jenny. Of seaweed washed against the shore, of gulls and crabs and sandcastles and buckets and spades perhaps, for she fingered a shell and said, ‘‘What colour shall I get for my bathing sii’i/t Postie looked from the pile of shells to the rain as it slanted across the window. He mumbled something about a bay “down Nelson way." Someone else came to look, and said, “No, I plump for Brighten Beach." An argument ensued. And as the ram kept up its incessant splatter against the glass, a flood of half-forgotten memories came to weave a spell about the group on the floor. For those sea-shells aroused in everybody a nostalgic longing for summer sands. ~ , “And what do they whisper to you?’ came the inevitable query from Jennifer as I held a curled shell to my ear. “ft is whispering,” I said, “about the things ‘beyond Englands foam’ and of all the brave airmen and soldiers and sailors who arc patrolling our shores night and day, while we sit snugly around

Sunshine Box." Cheerio,