“ Sidney, standing over her, wished she could do likewise with the same picturesque abandon. Mart was so splendidly “I don’t care a hang”; her tumbled hair now was thick with sand, across her tanned face was a smear of black, her shabby blouse was torn and open at the throat exposing her chest to the hot sun, her bare, hard-muscled legs were outstretched, the heels digging into the sand and the grimy toes separating and curling like the tentacles of a crab.“Oh, this is the life,” she sang. “Sit down and make yourself at home. This beach’s yours as much as mine I guess.” ”
Jane Abbott
Summary
Quotes from Laughing Last (Jane Abbott)
“ The fishing folk spent their leisure hours loafing in the shadow of the long shed, smoking and talking; often the artists boldly pitched their easels and stools in everyone’s way and painted a gray hull and a pink-gray sail, checkered with white patches, or a dark-skinned Portuguese bending to the task of spiking shiny cod from the bottom of a dory and throwing them to the wharf to be measured and weighed.Sidney never failed to thrill to the changing scenes that Rockman’s offered. She had become, like Mart and Lavender and a score of other youngsters, a familiar figure on the old wharf. ”
“ Dugald with their books went far from the Cape and Sunset Lane and the crooked body.The girls, left to themselves, had decided to go clamming. Of all the novel things she had done in the last two weeks Sidney liked clamming best. It was even more fun than the Arabella for after all the Arabella was only pretend. She liked to feel her bare toes suck up the goosy sand as she stepped over the wet beds. She could never dig as fast as Mart or Lavender because she had to stop and watch the sky and the clouds and the moving sails and the swooping seagulls. ”
