THE TELEGRAM
The morning dawned gloriously bright, and at the first ray of the sun
the girls were up and dressed and ready for the fun of the day.
"I don't know what I'll do if our trunks don't come," worried Amy, as
she took a rather creased white skirt and waist from her suitcase. "I
brought only one change and a bathing suit."
"Well, as long as you brought the bathing suit, it's all right,"
returned Mollie, sticking one last pin in her hair. "I intend to live in
mine to-day."
"And, anyway, we can't possibly expect the trunks till this afternoon,"
put in Grace; "so I don't see any use in worrying about them now."
"If they don't come to-day, either Mollie or I will go down to the
station and see about them," offered Betty, who was looking as sweet and
fresh as the morning itself. "We'll probably have to go down and get
them anyway, since we expressed them through by train and came by motor
ourselves."
"Oh, well, who cares," cried Mollie, stretching her arms above her head
and breathing deep of the salt-laden air. "When we get down on that
wonderful beach, that looks too good to be true, we'll be away from all
the rest of the world and we won't need any clothes but a bathing suit."
"Mother's up," cried Grace, as they stepped out into the hall and
smelled the welcome aroma of coffee. "I thought I heard somebody go
downstairs a little while ago."
"But we shouldn't have let her get the breakfast," cried Betty. "We
brought her up here for a rest, not to wait on us."
"She probably didn't sleep very well," said Grace, thinking of Will. "It
really isn't any wonder."
However, Mrs. Ford greeted the girls with a bright smile when they
entered the kitchen, and when they remonstrated with her for getting up
so early she merely laughed at them.
"Why, I haven't cooked for so long, it's just fun for me," she said
lightly, but Grace's loving eyes saw how pale she looked and how sad her
eyes were when she was not smiling.
"Game little mother," she whispered to herself.
However, after they had cleared the remains of a remarkably good
breakfast away, they asked Mrs. Ford to put on her own bathing suit and
take a dip with them.
After a minute's hesitation she agreed, and they ran upstairs eagerly to
get ready. They all had black suits, and all but Grace wore snug-fitting
rubber caps, designed more for use than looks. Grace wore a rakish
little Scottish cap affair that was immensely becoming but not at all
comfortable to swim in.
"How do I look?" she demanded complacently, when she turned from a
prolonged survey of herself in the mirror and pirouetted slowly before
them.
"Beautiful, but foolish," Mollie commented succinctly.
"Do you really expect to swim in it, dear?" asked Amy mildly.
"The effect would be altogether stunning," suggested Betty judicially,
her head on one side, "if you cocked it just a little further over one
eye so as to obscure the sight completely."
There was a ripple of laughter.
"Oh, you're all jealous," remarked Grace, not at all disturbed as she
turned back to the mirror once more to pull a curl a little more
fetchingly over her ear. "I might have known you would be."
"Goodness, anybody would think she was at Palm Beach or some other show
place," cried Mollie, pulling her own plain little cap a trifle lower
over her ears. "If you expect an audience, Gracie, I'm afraid you will
be disappointed."
"Here I am, trying to give you something good to look at--"
But they would hear no more and hustled her with scant ceremony away
from the mirror and out of the door.
"Come on!" cried Betty, taking the stairs two at a time. "Let's see who
gets to the water first. I'm betting nine to one on myself."
"Goodness, she's as conceited as you are, Gracie," gasped Mollie,
following hard on Betty's footsteps. "Here's my chance to take some of
it out of her!"
Grace and Amy, following at not quite such breakneck speed, came out on
the porch in time to see two slender, black-clad figures with vivid red
and green caps scrambling down the side of the bluff that led to the
beach.
As they started after them Mrs. Ford joined them and they ran together
to the edge of the bluff. The slope was not quite so gentle as they had
thought on the night before, and Mollie and Betty were puffing
considerably when they reached the bottom--which they did at almost the
same minute.
Then, fleet-footed, they sped across the sand toward the inviting water
beyond, while Mrs. Ford, Grace, and Amy clambered down the bluff in
their turn.
At the bottom they turned, saw Betty and Mollie reach the water's edge
at the same instant--or so it seemed to them--and dash into the green
depths. A moment more and the two black figures were lost to sight and
only two vivid caps bobbed on the surface of the water.
"Do you suppose it's quite safe?" asked Mrs. Ford. "I wish the girls
hadn't been in such a hurry."
"Oh you needn't worry about them," Grace assured her. "Betty and Mollie
are regular fish in the water, and you know there aren't any mean
currents around here. The beach slopes gradually down so that they can't
get caught in water holes either, so don't worry, Mother," and she
slipped an affectionate hand into her mother's and received an answering
smile in return.
And, oh, how good that water did feel!
As they waded into it up to their waists, Mollie and Betty came swimming
back, shaking the water from their eyes and cleaving the big combers
with long, powerful strokes.
"Well, who won?" Amy challenged them, as they came within shouting
distance.
"Tell the truth," added Grace.
"Both of us," yelled Mollie.
"Or neither," Betty answered, getting to her feet and walking the rest
of the way in toward them. "We couldn't have done better team work if we
had tried. Oh, isn't it glorious?"
"We don't know yet--we're not even all wet," returned Mollie, adding, as
a great comber came rushing toward them: "Come on, Gracie, here's a good
one. Let's get under it."
And "get under it" they did, cleaving the water prettily, and in another
minute were up on the other side of the big wave. They shook the water
from their eyes and struck out merrily.
"Don't go too far," Mrs. Ford called after them, and two bare gleaming
arms waved back at her.
The hours that followed were just one long delight, and the girls looked
surprised and a little abused when Mrs. Ford reluctantly called them in.
"Why, it can't be more than eleven," protested Grace.
"And we haven't seen the water for, oh, ages," added Mollie.
"Please, can't we have half an hour more?" Amy added.
Mrs. Ford looked smilingly from one to the other and then at Betty.
"Well, haven't you any petition to make?" she asked of the latter.
"I was thinking," said Betty squinting up at the sun, "that Grace was
wrong when she said it wasn't more than eleven. It seems to me to be
after twelve."
"It is," said Mrs. Ford firmly. "Quarter past."
"Well, let's go!" cried Betty, starting toward the bluff. "I don't know
about the rest of you, but I'm starving to death."
"But we'll want to swim again after lunch, won't we?" protested Mollie.
"Of course."
"Well, then," she argued reasonably, "we don't want to change our
clothes just for lunch, and we can't very well go up to the house in
dripping bathing suits."
The girls groaned.
"Then we'll have to wait for lunch until we've sat here for hours and
dried off," wailed Grace.
"And she hasn't even a box of chocolates!" Betty mocked her. "It is a
desperate case, Grace."
With another groan Grace sank into the soft, warm sand while the others
followed suit, looking so mournful that Mrs. Ford was moved to take pity
on them.
"I dried off long ago," she said, adding, as they looked at her
hopefully: "I tell you what I'll do. I'll go up and open a couple of
cans of tongue and make some sandwiches and bring down the cake we
bought yesterday. And we can have some milk to drink, for I had the boy
leave a couple of extra quarts this morning. How will that do?"
"Do!" the girls echoed, while Grace hugged her mother with vigor. The
eyes of the girls followed her gratefully as Mrs. Ford started off on
her work of rescue--at least, that is the way the hungry girls regarded
it.
"You know, I have a better appetite than I've had in weeks," announced
Mollie, as she dug her toes into the warm sand. "I haven't been eating
much lately."
"I hadn't noticed it," commented Grace dryly.
"Well, mother did," returned Mollie spiritedly. "She said she was glad I
was going away because she thought the change would do me good. I really
should have stayed at home, I suppose, and helped mother take care of
the twins," she added thoughtfully. "I never saw two children with such
an absolute genius for getting into mischief. But when they're caught,
they're so cunning and dear and say such quaint things that it is almost
impossible to get angry with them."
"They're adorable," agreed Betty, while all the girls smiled fondly at
thought of the twins.
"Just the same," remarked Grace, "although I love them, I'm glad I'm not
their sister, for I'd never be able to eat a candy in comfort," and the
girls laughed at her.
"It seems so wonderful and peaceful here," said Amy, after a short
pause, "and we seem so awfully far away from the rest of the world. It
almost makes one believe that the war 'over there' is a dream--"
"Or a nightmare," interpolated Mollie.
"Well, it isn't," said Grace, adding, as she dug her toes more deeply
into the yielding sand: "And if we don't hear more news of Will pretty
soon, I'll just die, that's all. I can't stand it!"
"There's your mother," cried Betty suddenly, glad of an excuse to change
the subject. "I think she's calling us, too. Come on, let's go."
Nothing loath, they got to their feet, shook the sand from their suits,
and hurried to the bluff where Mrs. Ford stood awaiting them.
As they clambered up toward her they noticed that she looked excited and
was holding a yellow envelope in her hand.
"The trunks have come," she said, as they ran up to her. "A big
lumbering red-haired fellow brought them from the station a few minutes
ago. He also brought this," indicating the envelope in her hand.
"What is it?" they cried, a strange premonition of evil tightening about
their hearts.
"A telegram for Mollie!"
Mollie turned a little pale under her tan and took the yellow envelope
gingerly, as though it had been poisoned, or contained some T. N. T.
explosive.
"Who on earth--" she began, then interrupted herself, and with trembling
fingers tore the envelope open. The girls watched her, wide-eyed and
tense.
"It's from mother," she cried, then crushed the paper in her hands and
looked around at the sympathetic faces with eyes grown dark with fear.
"Girls," she said, "I--I'm afraid to read it--I--"