I always get red bathing drawers.
I rather fancy myself in red drawers. They suit my complexion so. But
when I get to the sea I don't feel somehow that I want that early morning
bathe nearly so much as I did when I was in town.
On the contrary, I feel more that I want to stop in bed till the last
moment, and then come down and have my breakfast. Once or twice virtue
has triumphed, and I have got out at six and half-dressed myself, and
have taken my drawers and towel, and stumbled dismally off. But I
haven't enjoyed it. They seem to keep a specially cutting east wind,
waiting for me, when I go to bathe in the early morning; and they pick
out all the three-cornered stones, and put them on the top, and they
sharpen up the rocks and cover the points over with a bit of sand so that
I can't see them, and they take the sea and put it two miles out, so that
I have to huddle myself up in my arms and hop, shivering, through six
inches of water. And when I do get to the sea, it is rough and quite
insulting.
One huge wave catches me up and chucks me in a sitting posture, as hard
as ever it can, down on to a rock which has been put there for me. And,
before I've said "Oh! Ugh!" and found out what has gone, the wave comes
back and carries me out to mid-ocean. I begin to strike out frantically
for the shore, and wonder if I shall ever see home and friends again, and
wish I'd been kinder to my little sister when a boy (when I was a boy, I
mean).
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