CHAPTER I THE SURPRISE

“I think,” said Lucy Merrill in a whisper to her sister Dora, “that Uncle Dan has a surprise for us.”

Dora was industriously setting the table for supper. Lucy, at the kitchen dresser, was peeling peaches. Lucy had on a big apron belonging to her mother, and it covered both her and the stool on which she sat. Dora wore a pink apron over her checked pink-and-white dress, and Dora’s apron was just like the big one, only the right size.

Lucy owned a proper-sized apron also, but Lucy had been unlucky enough to upset the blueing bottle when she took a dish from the[12] kitchen closet. Her apron wasn’t hurt a bit, but Mrs. Merrill had rinsed it out and now it was flapping on the line in the back yard. The closet floor was bluer than the apron and not so easy to wash.

“What makes you think there is a surprise?” asked Dora, standing back from the table to see whether she had remembered everything that anybody could use during supper. No, she had forgotten the pulverized sugar for the peaches.

“Because,” said Lucy, “he keeps following Mother everywhere she goes, and I know he is teasing her to do something. I heard him say something about the beach.”

Dora stopped in the pantry doorway, her eyes big and blue. “Do you think we can be going to the beach?” she asked eagerly.

“My, I hope so!” said Lucy. “We haven’t been away this summer. And Father[13] said last night that the press was going to shut down for the week after Labor Day.”

Dora looked out of the window across the street at the low brick building where Father Merrill worked in the printing office.

“We had better not ask too many questions,” she said wisely. “Perhaps Uncle Dan is going to take us to White Beach for a day. But we did go to the vacation school, Lucy, and that was a great deal of fun.”

“It was,” agreed Lucy. “And it cost a dollar a week. But just one day at the beach would be lovely. I wish the Sunday-school picnic had gone there.”

Dora didn’t agree with Lucy. That annual picnic had been held at World’s End Pond. Even the salt water could not be nicer than that place.

Just as Lucy finished the last peach, Mrs. Merrill came in. Dora brought the sugar-bowl[14] from the pantry and looked hard at her mother. Sometimes it was possible to tell by Mother’s face how she felt about things.

Mrs. Merrill did not seem disturbed, but neither did she look as though she was thinking of anything especially pleasant. She put the rest of the supper on the table and told Lucy to call her father and Uncle Dan.

It was Uncle Dan who told the secret. Right in the middle of supper he turned to his sister.

“You know, Molly,” he began, “Jack says I may have his tent and we should need only one.”

“Dan!” said Mother Merrill, and everybody was still. The children looked at Uncle Dan. Then Father Merrill laughed.

“A tent!” shrieked Lucy. Dora jumped right out of her chair and ran around the table to her uncle.

[15]

“Are we going, too?” she asked quite breathlessly. “Can I sleep in a tent? I never did, you know.”

Mr. Merrill laughed again, and this time Dan laughed with him.

“You’ve done it now, Dan,” said his sister. “You may as well tell them.”

But Uncle Dan didn’t explain. “Oh, Molly, then you will go?” he asked as eagerly as the little girls.

“I suppose I shall have to,” said Mrs. Merrill, but she didn’t look as though she would find it very hard work.

“What is it? What is it?” Dora was asking with her arms around her young uncle’s neck.

“Quit choking me,” said Dan. “Go back and eat your supper.”

Dora gave him one last hard hug before returning to her chair. “I know it is nice,” she[16] said. “But is it the beach, Uncle Dan, and are we to sleep in a tent?”

“Maybe,” said Dan.

“The press is going to shut down for a week,” said Mrs. Merrill, “and Dan can get off, too. He wants to go over to White Beach. There’s a little shack we can have for not much money, but it has only two rooms. Dan thinks he can bunk on the porch. He wants Olive Gates to go with us, and she and you children would have to sleep in the tent.”

“I wouldn’t be scared if Olive was with us,” said Lucy. Dora was too happy to say anything at all. Her eyes shone and looked bluer than ever. When one is only eight, there are a great many important things in life. To go to the beach and to sleep in a tent seemed almost too good to be true.

“Alice Harper is at the beach this summer, but she sleeps in a house,” said Lucy. Nobody[17] was listening. Dan and Mr. Merrill were both talking, and it was plain that they wanted to go just as much as the children did.

“What shall we do with Timmy?” asked Dora, a sudden cloud coming over her face. It would never do to leave the tiger-striped pussy to take care of himself for a week. “Can he go with us?”

“No,” said Mrs. Merrill. “He would be scared to death, if he didn’t run away entirely.”

Dora looked so distressed that Mr. Merrill could not stand it. “We’ll plan for Timmy,” he said kindly. “I never did think much of people who go off for a vacation and leave their cats to take care of themselves. We will leave the key of the house with Jim Baker, and ask his little girl to come over twice a day to feed Timmy and to let him into the kitchen every night if he wants to sleep inside. But these nice nights, Timmy may prefer to stay out.”

[18]

Dora’s face looked bright again. Of course she could not enjoy the beach if Timmy were not cared for. He was used to being petted and fed regularly. Now there was not a cloud in her sky.

Uncle Dan was as pleased as the little girls. He talked much more than usual during supper, and after it was over and the dishes were being washed, he came to where his sister was mixing bread.

“All right for me to ask Olive?” he inquired.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Merrill, smiling a little. “Tell her we all want her to go with us.”

Dan was off in a hurry, but before he went he gave his sister an awkward hug.

Never were dishes done with such speed! Mrs. Merrill looked at them suspiciously but did not say a word. Lucy had washed them properly and Dora had wiped them as dry as[19] could be, even though they worked so fast. And yet neither of them knew why they were hurrying. They were not to go to the beach for three days, not until Saturday.

There was plenty to do between then and the end of the week. First, they had to decide what clothes to take, and were surprised to find that Mother did not think as they did about the dresses. She came and looked at them when Lucy and Dora had laid them out on their bed.

“You won’t need your good clothes,” she said. “Those must be kept for school. You will be playing on the beach all day, and not need to be dressed up. When we go over, you will have on one good dress apiece, and that is enough.”

Lucy and Dora were disappointed. They thought that people who went away on a vacation should take all their best clothes.

[20]

“But not people who live in tents,” said Mrs. Merrill. “That makes a great difference. We are only going to camp, you know.”

“But I may take Arcturus?” Dora begged, bringing from her bureau the little silver bear on her neck-chain, the bear which had been named for a star. “Arcturus does really need sea air, Mother.”

“He looks as though he were pining away,” said Mrs. Merrill, but she said that on the way over Dora might wear the necklace.

After Mother had edited that collection of clothes, Lucy and Dora packed them very easily into one suit-case. When they considered that this was to be a camping-trip, it was fun to see how much one could get on without.

Then there was the question of food. Mother made a great many cookies, both of sugar and molasses, and shut them into tin boxes. She also made some cake.

[21]

On Friday a pleasant thing happened. The man who owned the printing-press where Mr. Merrill was foreman, said that he would have all their things taken over to the beach in the delivery truck belonging to the press. There would be room on the driver’s seat for Mr. and Mrs. Merrill. The little girls could sit on the soft baggage in the back of the truck.

This made it very easy to take whatever they wished. Mrs. Merrill wrapped up some more blankets and made some more cake. She also filled a basket with apples.

Though they were expecting to find it great fun, Lucy and Dora did not ride on the back of the truck. Jack Simmons, who lent Uncle Dan his tent, had a little Ford car. He offered to take Olive and Uncle Dan and the two children. He would stay and help Uncle Dan pitch the tent.

It was important to have a pleasant day on[22] Saturday. All Friday afternoon, while they were doing the last things, Lucy and Dora kept looking at the sky. Their looking did not seem to make any difference, for it did not become more blue, nor any less so, no matter how hard they gazed.

One of the very last things was to go to the Public Library and choose some books to take with them. For, as Mrs. Merrill said, it might rain at the beach, and then they would be glad of something to read.

The children did not wish to think of rain, but they chose the library books with great care. Lucy decided to take “What Katy Did,” but Dora could not find any book which seemed suited to so important an occasion. Finally she asked the librarian, Miss Perkins, to choose one for her.

When Miss Perkins knew that the story must last a week and was to be read at the[23] beach, she agreed that no ordinary book would do. She went to a shelf in the back of the library and brought Dora the “Story of Doctor Dolittle.”

“You will like this book very much, Dora,” she said. “And I think your Uncle Dan will like it, too. It is a new book, just put into the library, so you will take very good care of it, won’t you?”

“Oh, I will!” said Dora, who had caught sight of the funny pictures in the text. “I will be very careful of it, Miss Perkins.”

“And is Arcturus going to the beach with you?” asked Miss Perkins as she slipped “Doctor Dolittle” into an envelope for safe traveling.

Dora explained that Arcturus would benefit from sea air, and Miss Perkins at once said that it would do him good.

[24]

CHAPTER II AT THE BEACH

The house where the Merrills lived in Westmore was a brown cottage, but it seemed large and like a palace when the children saw the shack at the beach. Still, they liked the shack very much.

The front room had a couch and chairs, and a square table which could be used for eating. There was one wee bedroom and the smallest kitchen ever seen. That kitchen was hardly so large as a good-sized cupboard. Mrs. Merrill could stand in its centre and reach everything on all four walls. It contained a little sink and an oil stove and some dishes,—not a great many dishes, but that made fewer to wash.

The shack stood on a hard sandy ridge, not near any other house. Behind, the sand sloped[25] to a road where automobiles were always passing. In front there was sand that slid around under foot, and then a broad hard beach and the wonderful ocean. When the children came on that sunny Saturday, for it was sunny in spite of all their watching the sky, the sea was a deep blue, with white fringes on the shore, where the waves ran up and then slid back again. The sand looked grayish-green, but when the water touched it, it turned shiny.

Dora could not take her eyes off the ocean. She forgot that she had wished to see Uncle Dan and Jack Simmons put up the tent. They pitched it near the shack, on the south side, and drove the poles and the pegs in just as hard as they could hammer them, so that the wind would not loosen the ropes.

When the tent was up, Dora and Lucy went inside. They pulled up all the beach peas growing in the enclosed space, so there was[26] only a floor of warm dry sand, soft and fine. Mrs. Merrill had brought on the truck some rag rugs. These were spread on the clean sand and the legs of the cots put on the rugs. If this were not done, a cot might tumble down when somebody was asleep on it.

Between the tent poles Uncle Dan stretched a rope. This was for Olive and the little girls to hang their clothes over. There was not much room left when the three cots had been set up and a chair brought from the house to hold a wash-bowl and pitcher, but Lucy and Dora thought it was beautiful.

“We will keep our suit-cases under the beds,” said Olive. “And we must be careful not to lose little things in this sand.”

It took only a few minutes to get settled in the tent. Lucy and Dora put on some old rompers they had brought for bathing dresses. Olive put on her pretty blue suit and tied a[27] blue handkerchief around her hair. Dora thought she looked extremely nice. She decided that when she was twenty, like Olive, she would have a blue jersey bathing suit. But meantime she liked her rompers very well.

Such a wonderful beach that was! There were not many shells to pick up, but a great many interesting pebbles. Almost immediately the children found a strange creature, shaped like a horse’s hoof, but transparent and with a long, sharp tail. It seemed quite dead and Dora was glad that it was. She really would not like to meet it strolling down the beach. Olive laughed and said that it was a horseshoe crab and would not do her any harm.

Quite soon, Father and Mother Merrill and Uncle Dan came out, dressed to go into the sea. Lucy and Dora waded in to their waists, squealing because the water was so cold. But[28] in just a few minutes it did not seem cold at all, and they wanted to stay in all day.

Mother would not let them. Much sooner than they wished, she told them to go out and dress.

“It won’t do to stay too long the first time,” she said. “Put on your old ginghams and you may go barefooted and wade all you like, but you have been in the water long enough for to-day.”

It seemed hard to come out when Uncle Dan and Olive were still jumping waves and even diving through them, but it would be fun to go without shoes or stockings and to run into the edge of the water whenever they wished. Besides, Mother herself came out when they did.

Lucy and Dora dressed quickly. They hung their wet clothes on a line which Mother stretched from the corner of the shack to the[29] rear tent pole. Something was cooking on the oil stove which smelled very good.

“When will dinner be ready?” asked Lucy. “I am as hungry as can be.”

“It will be ready before the others are dressed,” said her mother. “I wish they would come out.”

Strange to say, Uncle Dan was willing to leave the ocean before Olive. Father Merrill grew cold and waded ashore, but Olive did not look cold at all. It was Uncle Dan who seemed shivery and whose lips turned blue. Olive ran into the tent and presently threw out her suit. Dora hung it on the line, after brushing off what sand she could manage.

What a funny dinner that was! Nobody had more than one spoon, and some of the spoons were not a size any one would choose to eat with. There were just forks enough to[30] go around and Lucy and Dora had to share a knife. But this was only the more sport.

Olive’s hair was wet and tied with a ribbon, so she looked like a little girl with it hanging down her back. There were not chairs for everybody, and Uncle Dan sat on an old crate which kept cracking and acting as though it were going to break and let him down on the floor. But Dan didn’t care if it did.

“Alice Palmer lives in a house somewhere at this beach,” said Lucy contentedly. “It is much more fun to camp.”

After dinner Mrs. Merrill told them all to go down on the beach and she would wash the dishes.

“We will do nothing of the kind,” said Olive. “You got dinner alone and I shall wash the dishes myself and the children will wipe them. You will not be allowed in the kitchen, Molly Merrill, and indeed, there is not[31] room for anybody but Lucy and Dora and me.”

“Well!” said Mrs. Merrill, and she put on her hat and went down to the edge of the water with Father Merrill.

There was no can for the garbage, so Olive gave the dish to Uncle Dan and told him to take it down the beach away from all the houses and dig a hole and bury it.

“What for?” asked Dan. “Why not throw it out for the gulls to eat?”

Olive said he was not to do this. The gulls might not eat it immediately and the flies would collect and it would be unpleasant for people who were passing. It must be buried, and quite deep at that.

Lucy and Dora were amused to see Uncle Dan go off to bury the garbage just as Olive said. But she looked so pretty with her wavy hair tied back with the blue ribbon that it[32] was no wonder Uncle Dan did what he was told.

For dinner, they had used every dish in the shack, except one big and very black kettle, but even then it did not take long to wash them. Just for fun, Lucy and Dora counted as they wiped. There were precisely forty-three dishes, and that included all the spoons and knives and forks.

“Now,” said Olive as they finished, “don’t you think it would be nice to have sandwiches for supper and eat them on the beach?”

Lucy and Dora both thought it would be an excellent plan.

“Then let’s go and ask your mother,” said Olive. “Because if she is willing, we will make the sandwiches right now, and then we shall not have anything to do for supper except eat it.”

Olive and the little girls ran a race to see[33] which would first reach Mrs. Merrill. Lucy won, because her legs were longer than Dora’s and, anyway, Dora wasn’t trying very hard to beat Olive.

Mrs. Merrill approved of the sandwiches. She said that Olive might plan supper exactly as she liked. So they ran back to the shack.

By this time Uncle Dan had buried the garbage and he helped make the sandwiches. Some were filled with peanut butter and some with orange marmalade. Olive also boiled six eggs, one for each. She wrapped the sandwiches in waxed paper, and put them in a basket covered with a damp cloth. She put in the eggs and the salt and the pepper, and a loaf of cake and a knife to cut it with. She put in some peaches and some paper napkins.

“Our supper is ready,” she announced. “All we have to do is to come for the basket when we want to eat.”

[34]

Uncle Dan wanted to walk up the beach to see the life-saving station. Olive’s hair was dry now, so she twisted it up and pinned on a pretty hat made of blue silk ribbon. They invited the little girls to go, but both preferred to play in the sand.

Lucy took a big spoon from the kitchen to dig a well, but Dora planned to collect shiny white and gray-green pebbles and make a house for herself. This she did by outlining the walls with pebbles and leaving spaces for doors and windows. The beach was so wide that there was room for a large house. Quite soon Lucy came and began to make herself a house next door to Dora’s.

To build the house took a long time, but just as it was finished, Dora had a visitor. The tide was coming, and the first she knew, old Father Ocean ran right in through her front door without even so much as knocking! He did not stay, but ran promptly out again, leaving wet marks all over the front hall of Dora’s new house.

Old father ocean ran right in through the front door—Page 34.

[35]

Dora did not say anything then, but the next time a big wave rushed up, the water came into her parlor and curled about her bare toes.

“I shall have to move,” she said to Lucy.

“Or go away until to-morrow,” suggested Lucy. “Look! How low the sun is.”

Where had that afternoon gone? It did not seem as though they had been playing more than a few minutes. But the sea was growing gray instead of blue, and the sun struck long level lines through the air. Up by the shack Father and Mother were enjoying themselves; Mother sitting quite idle, just looking at the water; Father lying on his back in the sand. Away down the beach Olive and Uncle Dan were coming. It must be time for that picnic supper.

[36]