A MERRY WHIRL OF GOOD TIMES
It was as Betty had said. One never knew what interesting happening
would come next, though some were planned. New adventures in daily
pleasures and one almost tragic event were here for Betty Lee in the few
weeks that lay before her in Maine. But she never could get satisfactory
photographs of the old sea that stirred her so. Clouds and surf never
did come out as they really looked. She concluded that Arthur Penrose or
some real artist, who could give the coloring to sky and sea and paint
the clouds as they looked, ought to be there to do justice to water and
sky. But Betty did not talk much about her feeling of the sea, aside
from the joking about the consummation of her desire to swim in it.
The Waites were the first friends to look them up. Marcella came over
the next day from a cottage at no great distance, for the Waites had
come on by train and arrived before the Gwynne party. She invited them
at once to a beach party, “by moonlight,” said she. “We’ll not swim this
time, but have a great picnic, with _everybody_ there.” Marcella looked
meaningly at Carolyn as she said this.
“Larry’s visiting some of his college friends and will be home in time
for the beach party, I think. He may bring his chum with him. We don’t
know. If I weren’t so busy, I’d tell you more about everybody. Several
girls from our sorority are driving over this afternoon and Peggy
Pollard is going to stay.
“Peggy!” exclaimed Carolyn. “Why I invited her with us and she couldn’t
come!”
“It’s all changed,” explained Marcella. “After you left, her mother made
different arrangements, to go West with one of her sons and his family,
I think; and she told Peggy that if she still wanted to come East, she
could. Peggy was in a great quandary, but crazy to come. I found it out
through one of the girls; and so Peggy’s dear little red head will
repose on either your pillow or mine, Carolyn, as you like. Peggy is up
the coast a little, with the girls I mentioned, though she came with
us.”
“You didn’t mention their names, Marcella, but I can guess or be
surprised. If you don’t mind, Marcella, we’ll have Peggy here. Another
cot in my room, or two of us in a different room, will fix it.”
“Oh, let’s all be together, Carolyn! It’s such fun!”
“Just as you say, Kathryn.”
The beach party, then, was to be full of surprises. The three girls
exhausted the possible list of guests in their surmises and then
concluded that it was a waste of time. Unpacking, investigating their
surroundings, another swim and a walk up the shore for some distance
pretty well filled the day until it was best to “rest up” for the beach
party, which began at eight o’clock. “It may be a little ‘spuzzy,’
girls,” suggested Carolyn, “though Marcella did not say so. But if it is
to be a sorority affair and perhaps Larry and his chum coming, not to
mention others that evidently Marcella means to spring upon us, there
will probably be some dressing up.”
“You don’t mean party dresses, do you?” asked Betty, “thin things? I
thought at beach parties you wore sweaters or jackets and easy things to
rough it in.”
“Sport things, Betty, this time. Yours are all right, and take your
white sweater if you wish.”
“I ‘wager’ you know whom Marcella is going to spring upon ‘_us_’,”
remarked Kathryn.
“I know—some,” Carolyn acknowledged. “That is the other secret.”
With great care did the three girls dress for the beach party. There was
a “gorgeous” moon and a mild air. Betty scarcely knew herself, she
thought, as she looked from the elevation and the shadows of the group
of trees about the Gwynne house toward where a line of rollers
restlessly met the beach and the light of a full moon fell across the
waters. And oh, _who_ would be at the party?
Active figures were darting about on the sands by the time Betty,
Carolyn and Kathryn arrived and hurried toward where they saw Marcella
by the light of a fire already started on the beach. And who was that,
hatless, merry, throwing a big piece of wreckage upon the fire?
“Ted Dorrance!” exclaimed Kathryn. “That’s the other surprise, Carolyn!”
“M’m,” lightly replied Carolyn. “And now don’t faint or anything, Betty.
Chet’s here, too.”
Betty did not much like this suggestion and replied that she was not
likely to faint at seeing Chet Dorrance anywhere, especially as it was
only the other day that she had seen him receive his high school
diploma. Betty, usually very sweet about all her friends, felt really
annoyed for about two minutes. But Chet’s own hearty and unsentimental
greeting assured her.
“Didn’t Carolyn tell you that Ted and I were coming to visit Larry and
Marcella?” asked Chet. “Of course it was all fixed up at the last
minute. We’ve got Mother settled down at Cape Cod and drove up here with
Larry and his room-mate, you know, and a couple of cousins of his
room-mate. Come over and meet them, or it would be more proper to bring
them to you, wouldn’t it? But they’re with those girls. We didn’t know
anything about the other fellows’ coming till Larry telegraphed us about
meeting us and all coming on together in Judd Penrose’s car. We’ve taken
a cottage of our own now, since Marcella’s house is full up with girls.
You ought to see where we are going to ‘bach’ it, though I see where we
don’t do any cooking to speak of!”
“‘Penrose,’” said Betty. “We met some boys by that name on the way up
here. I wonder——”
But she did not wonder long. There, with an armful of driftwood, was
Archie Penrose, whose face, like Ted’s before, was lit up by the fire as
he stooped. A crowd of girls and boys were around the fire and Betty,
greeting those she knew and introduced to those she had not met, was
soon in the midst of the friends and fun.
“You didn’t expect me to carry out my threat so soon, did you?” grinned
Arthur Penrose. “Neither did I; but we’re well met. Will you go
sketching with me tomorrow?”
“I’d love to, but Carolyn is my hostess and you’ll have to find out what
she’s going to do.”
“From all the plans, I take it that we’ll have a picnic of some sort all
the time we’re here, every day.”
Like the Dorrance boys, the two Penroses had settled their parents and
Gwen in a summer resort further South. Then came a telegram from their
cousin, Judd Penrose, and an invitation for Gwen from Marcella in
another urgent telegram, a night letter. Gwen had come by train. The
boys waited to be picked up by Judd and Larry with the Dorrances.
Gwen Penrose almost fell into Betty’s arms, such was her enthusiasm at
seeing her. “Isn’t this _marvellous_?” she asked, “and to think that we
hadn’t the _slightest idea_ of it when we met before! I did not even
remember the name of Judd’s room-mate! I was crazy to come with Marcella
when she went to see Carolyn and you and Kathryn; but she wouldn’t let
me. She wanted the surprise to be complete, she said.”
“Well, it certainly was—is!” answered Betty. “And now Art can make me a
sketch of this lovely place—if he will.”
“Oh, he will all right,” Gwen assured her. “He thinks you’re just about
the sweetest thing he’s seen for a long while.”
Betty laughed. “We like scenery—that’s all.”
Lawrence Waite, who was with another small group of girls, Betty did not
meet at first; but presently he came quickly over to where she stood
talking with one and another, and cordially took her hand. “Hello there,
Titania. I saw you by the light of the moon. Any other fairies abroad?”
“It is a night for them, isn’t it?” brightly replied Betty. “But they
might be afraid of pirates on this coast, mightn’t they?”
“Not of the Pirate of Penzance,” Larry assured her. “Long ago, in a
gloomy cave, _by the light of one flickering candle_, the queen of the
fairies was not afraid of him, was she?”
“Not a bit,” laughed Betty. “She thought he was real nice.”
“Is _that_ all?” began the smiling former “Pirate of Penzance,” but Judd
Penrose joined them at this moment and was introduced.
The sorority girls who were visiting Marcella were for the most part
older. Marcella, too, had received her high school diploma and was a
little inclined to attend an Eastern school instead of continuing in the
“home town” university. Two of her visitors were girls from this school.
Other girls and boys were from this summer colony. Peggy Pollard was the
only girl of Marcia’s high school sorority from Betty’s class, and how
she was welcomed by her classmates! “That is all that is necessary to
make this summer a success, Peggy—your being here,” warmly said Kathryn
Allen.
Visiting, strolling on the beach with one and another, toasting
marshmallows, hearing all “the latest” about everybody, preparing and
eating the excellent lunch provided—and all on the rocky coast of
Maine, made Betty Lee’s cup of happiness full. Chet did not try to
monopolize her. Everybody was “jolly” with everybody else and great
plans were made for coming days. “_Carpe diem_,” folks, said Judson
Penrose, “or in other words, ‘Gather ye roses while ye may’"—and his
eyes were upon “dear old Marcella,” as he said this and suggested a
chowder party for the next day and a trip by car to a lake further
inland on the following day. Betty whispered to Kathryn that she would
have to pinch herself to make sure that it wasn’t a dream.
Like Betty, though in college, Larry Waite would be a senior next year,
a senior at Yale. And he had not forgotten that crazy Hallowe’en!
Betty’s little experience with candle and mirror still remained
unmentioned to the other girls. She sometimes wondered if Larry had ever
spoken of it. Otherwise, it was an amusing secret between them—and, of
course, a bit romantic, though nothing would ever come of it. Of course
not.
Chowder was duly served on the beach at the next beach party. The trip
to the beautiful little lake was a second exciting excursion. Not even
the mornings were exempt from gala events especially when long trips
were planned. Inland they went by car and for water trips the boys
secured a motor boat of moderate size which would accommodate all of
Marcella’s and Carolyn’s visitors and the boys of their bachelor
cottage. It was supposed to be “Welcome Inn,” which sign adorned the
doorway; but Ted said that a better name would be “Never At Home” or, if
one must make a pun, “S’m’ Other Time Inn.”
But in a few days the girls from the other resort had departed, leaving
two recent seniors with their classmate, Marcella, and the two younger
girls, Peggy Pollard and Gwendolyn Penrose, who finally spent part of
their time at Marcella’s and the rest at Carolyn’s.
Betty enjoyed all the trips, but she still liked the water best, in it
to swim, or on it to explore the coast, with its bays and inlets or to
go out upon the bounding billows that Chet teased Betty about, as far as
it was wise for the boys to take the motor boat.
And this was how it happened that Betty was drawn into one tragic
occurrence which might have entirely spoiled the summer’s pleasure for
her and brought distress upon some of her friends.