THE FORT BUILDERS
“Is that your dog?” Sunny Boy asked Ellen curiously.
“She isn’t anybody’s dog,” declared Ellen seriously. “At least, not
really. Queen did belong to Dr. Maynard over in the town, but she
learned to ride on the trolley cars, and now she won’t stay at home.
Every summer she’s down on the beach all day, playing.”
“But dogs get hungry,” protested Sunny. “An’ where can she sleep?”
“She sleeps most anywhere,” said Ellen, who was spending her third
summer in Nestle Cove and really knew Queen very well indeed.
“Sometimes she sleeps on our front porch. And my mother always feeds
her if she acts hungry. All the people in the cottages know Queen.”
“Here’s a shell for you, Sunny,” announced Ralph, who had been running
up the beach looking for one. “Let’s start the fort right here in this
corner. You mark how it goes, Stephen.”
Stephen knew all about forts. He had a big brother who was an officer
in the regular army, and he lived in forts, just as more ordinary
people live in houses.
“First you have a wall,” said Stephen. “You can begin on that, Ellen.
Oh, ’way off! There, that’s about right. And Sunny Boy and Ralph and me
will make a great big fort, big enough to get into.”
To measure the height of their fort, they used one of the old pilings
left from the pier that had burned and had never been rebuilt, and then
they began to heap up the sand. If Stephen had only known it, what
they were building looked far more like an Eskimo’s hut than it did a
fort, but that didn’t matter as long as the builders were satisfied.
“Now what do you think of that?” Stephen stood off to admire their
work. “I wish Aunt Hallie would hurry up and come and see it.”
“Isn’t the wall nice?” asked Ellen, who had been working every minute
to finish her part of the task. “It’s just as smooth! Feel, Stephen.”
“Yes, that’s great,” approved Stephen. “Want to see how it looks
inside, Sunny? Stoop down, and don’t hit your head anywhere, or you’ll
knock it down.”
Sunny Boy crawled carefully through the doorway of the fort. It was
hollowed out inside to make a little room. He was half way in and half
way out when he heard Ellen exclaim: “Look what Queen has in her mouth!
Do you suppose she got it out of the water?”
[Illustration: Sunny Boy crawled carefully through the doorway of the
fort
_Page 119_
]
Sunny was curious to know what Queen had, and he attempted to back out
hastily to see. He forgot that the doorway wasn’t very high, and when
he stood up, bump! went his yellow head, and down about him tumbled the
sand fort.
“Now you’ve done it!” scolded Stephen, as Sunny Boy’s feet waved wildly
in the air. “Hurry up and dig, Ralph, he’ll choke!”
Ralph and Ellen dug frantically with clam shells and spades, but they
had dug a deeper hole than they knew, and Sunny Boy was really buried
under a heavy load of sand.
“Take the pail,” ordered Stephen, who was older than Ralph or Ellen,
and able to realize that Sunny Boy might be in danger. “Ellen, you
go and get—” Stephen shaded his eyes with his hand and looked up the
beach. “You go and get the life-saver’s rake,” he told her.
Every morning, when the life-savers cleaned up the beach, they used
long-handled wooden rakes. Usually they put these away in lockers under
the pier, but Stephen’s quick eyes had seen a rake left out to-day and
thrust carelessly under the piling. The two life-savers were far out
beyond the breakers now, in a rowboat, watching the bathers.
“I got it!” Ellen came racing back with the rake. “Let me rake Sunny
out, Stephen.”
“You’re too little. Let go,” said Stephen. He began to claw at the sand
fort vigorously.
“Here come Mother and Mrs. Horton,” announced Ellen, just as Stephen
and Ralph together succeeded in uncovering Sunny Boy.
Sunny Boy sat up, rather frightened and extremely uncomfortable. There
was sand in his yellow hair, sand in his eyes, and sand in his mouth.
“Ugh!” he spluttered. “Ugh! I couldn’t see a thing. I couldn’t even
breathe!”
“Why, Sunny Boy, what happened to you?” asked his mother wonderingly.
“This is Ellen and Ralph’s mother, dear.”
Mrs. Gray smiled down at Sunny. She was very tall and had gray hair.
Sunny Boy held out his hand to her.
“You got rather the worst of it, didn’t you?” she said to him. “I think
you must have pulled the sand house down upon you. But a swim will fix
you up. Your mother tells me you are going in to-day.”
“Aunt Bessie is waiting for you at the house,” Mrs. Horton told Sunny
Boy. “She and Aunt Betty are going in bathing this morning. They’ll
look after you. I mean to sit here and sew with Mrs. Gray and watch
you.”
Sunny Boy turned to trot off to the bungalow, but came back.
“What did Queen have?” he asked curiously.
“An orange,” answered Ellen promptly. “I guess she stole it from some
one’s lunch box.”
Aunt Bessie was sitting on the porch knitting, a raincoat thrown over
her bathing suit.
“I’m going in swimming with you, Aunt Bessie. Sha’n’t we have fun?
Where’s my bathing suit?” cried the excited Sunny Boy.
“Your mother left your suit in the house to the left,” she informed her
nephew. “Want any help, dear?”
“I can undress all right,” Sunny Boy reminded her reproachfully. “I
don’t take time ’cept when I’m getting dressed.”
Aunt Betty, it seemed, could “swim like a fish” as Aunt Bessie
admiringly admitted.
“Let her hold you, Sunny Boy,” she urged her little nephew. “You’ll
learn to swim right away if you’re not afraid.”
Sunny Boy wasn’t afraid, not the least bit. Aunt Betty said she would
teach him how to float first, and she carried him out to where the
water was smoother and put him on his back just as though she were
putting him down on his own soft bed.
“Just keep your head up a bit,” she told him. “Never mind if the water
does come over your chin—there. I won’t let go, I’m holding you firmly,
dear. Now isn’t that fun?”
Sunny Boy agreed that it was. He tried floating several times, and then
Aunt Betty carried him back to the beach and he sat down comfortably
and let the waves roll over him.
“You’re having a beautiful time,” said Mother’s voice behind him.
She had come up and he had not heard her footsteps in the soft sand.
“I want you to go in and get dressed now, dear. Why, you’re getting
sunburned already.”
Sunny Boy did not want to go in. He wanted to stay and play longer in
the water. He scuffled his bare feet impatiently, and a little frown
grew on his forehead.
“Why, Sunny Boy!” Mother’s voice was distinctly surprised. “Here Daddy
left you to look after me, and you make a fuss the very first thing I
ask you to do. What do you suppose he would say to that?”
“I’m going,” announced Sunny Boy, scrambling to his feet. “I’m going
this minute, Mother. Can I have a cracker?”
“‘May I have a cracker?’” corrected Mrs. Horton. “Well, just one. We’re
going to have an early lunch.”
“All right. Then I’ll tell Harriet just one cracker.”
Sunny Boy ran over the hot sand, up to the bathhouse, and rubbed so
hard with the rough towels that he was as dry and clean as could be in
the shortest possible time. He put on his sailor suit and went to his
room to brush his hair.
“Mother says I may have one cracker, please,” he reported to Harriet,
whom he found setting the table in the dining-room.
“’Tis a pink nose, you have,” Harriet told him frankly. “Never mind,
you’ll be brown as a berry before your father comes down Saturday.
Here’s your cracker now.”
Sunny Boy ran down again to the beach and had time to help Ellen and
Ralph build a schoolhouse in the sand before Mrs. Horton and the two
aunts—for Aunt Betty had not stayed in the water many minutes after
Sunny Boy came out—gathered up their magazines and sewing and started
back to the bungalow for lunch.
“Sunny Boy,” said Mother at the table—and, by the way, Sunny Boy sat in
Daddy’s place when he wasn’t there and tried his best to behave as the
man of the house should—“if you take a nap this afternoon, you may sit
up to-night for a couple of hours and go with us down on the beach.”
Now, Sunny Boy was not fond of taking naps, and since his fifth
birthday he had been gradually skipping them, since Mother thought that
if a laddie went to bed early every night and was not cross during the
day he might manage nicely without sleeping in the afternoon. A cross
boy needed a nap—that was what Mother always said.
“Well, Mother,” answered Sunny slowly, “I don’t feel sleepy—I don’t
suppose I could go ’less I took a nap?”
“No, indeed,” answered Mother. “No nap means you go to bed at a quarter
of seven as usual.”
“All right,” agreed Sunny Boy, with a long breath. “I’ll go and take a
nap.”
He went into his room very much like a soldier going to war. We’re
sorry to say he kicked off his shoes—one of them went flying across
the pretty room and landed on a chair and the other went under the bed.
Then, dressed as he was, Sunny flung himself on the bed.
“Can’t go to sleep right in the day-time,” he grumbled to himself.
“I’ll bet Ralph doesn’t take naps.”
But Sunny Boy didn’t know that plenty of salt air and an ocean bath and
much running about on a sandy beach can make a small boy sleepy even
against his will; in the middle of a big yawn, Sunny went to sleep.
When he woke, he heard his mother moving about in the next room. He
felt hot and uncomfortable, the way one feels, you know, when the eyes
first open after a nap. When you’re a baby you cry, but when you are
older, if you don’t watch out, you’re cross. Sunny Boy felt cross.
“Hello!” his mother lifted the door curtain and smiled at him. “I
heard you turn over, dear. Supper will be ready in a few minutes.”
Sunny Boy sat up in bed.
“Supper!” he echoed. “Why, Mother, is it night?”
“It’s nearly six,” Mrs. Horton told him. “You’ve had a fine long nap.
Now I’ll help you wash, dear, and when you get into a fresh suit you’ll
begin to feel happier. And then I’ll tell you what fun we are going to
have to-night.”