There is a delicious irony and humour in this Jamesian story about Eustace and Hilda, an Edwardian brother and sister, with its famous opening scene as nine-year-old Eustace watches an anemone devour a shrimp in a tidepool among the rocks on a Norfolk beach during the summer holidays.A shadow begins to be cast over the children's innocent conversations and gaucherie, revealing their anxieties about themselves, and the constraints of their cosseted lives, as the outside world - of other children, dancing lessons, adults, illness, funerals, money, excursions in landaus, future schools - impinges in Eustace and Hilda's intimacies and fantasies.