CHAPTER VIII.
LITTLEHAMPTON A children's paradise--Wind-swept villages--Cary and Coleridge--Sussex folklore--Climping--Richard Jefferies and Sussex--John Taylor the Water Poet--Highdown Hill--A miller in love with death--A digression on mills and millers--Treason at Patching--A wife in a thousand--A Sussex truffler--The Palmer triplets.
Littlehampton is favoured in having both sea and river.

It also has lawns between the houses and the beach, as at Dieppe, and is as nearly a children's paradise as exists.

The sea at low tide recedes almost beyond the reach of the ordinary paddler, which is as it should be except for those that would swim.

A harbour, a pier, a lighthouse, a windmill--all these are within a few yards of each other.

On the neighbouring beach, springing from the stones, you find the yellow-horned poppy, beautiful both in flower and leaf, and the delicate tamarisk makes a natural hedge parallel with the sea, to Worthing on the one side, and to Bognor on the other.
The little villages in the flats behind the eastern tamarisk hedge--Rustington, Preston, Ferring, are, in summer, veritable sun traps, with their white walls dazzling in radiance.