AT THE BEACH
“I wonder what you’ll think of our camp, Molly.”
Pauline and Molly were swinging in a hammock on the front veranda of
The Old and New, chattering like spring chickadees.
[Illustration: “Pauline and Molly were swinging in a hammock.”
_Page 53_]
The Bradstreets had arrived from Silver Gate City the previous evening,
bringing Harry Hobbs with them; and Captain Bradstreet had gone on to
the canyon that morning with Hop Kee.
“Papa has a wooden building up there,--sort of a shanty, where he
stores the furniture every winter,” went on Pauline. “It is near to Mr.
Arnesten’s cottage, and Mr. Arnesten sees to things when papa is away.”
“Are the Arnestens all the neighbors you have, Pauline?”
“Yes, unless you count the Wassons. But the Wassons are three miles
away, on papa’s bee-ranch. We’ll go to see them, Molly, when you’re at
the camp.”
“Oh, that’ll be delightful!” Molly pushed her heavy auburn hair away
from her face, a habit of hers when things pleased her.
“Right after breakfast every morning, Molly, we’ll put on our
sunbonnets,--you can borrow auntie’s,--and we’ll march over to Mr.
Arnesten’s for the eggs, and see him feed the chickens. He has turkeys
besides, and one proud old gobbler that struts about as if he owned all
the gold mines of California.”
“Didn’t you say the Arnestens had a little girl, Pauline?”
“Yes, Olga, the old-fashionedest little soul! She has eyes just the
color of a grindstone, but her lashes are yellow, and her skin is
yellow too. She used to trudge over with buttermilk last summer.”
“Then the Arnestens have a cow?”
“I should say they do! It’s always breaking into the garden and eating
up the pease. We mind that, because Mr. Arnesten supplies us with
vegetables.”
“And with chickens too, I suppose, Polly?”
“Yes; Hop Kee cooks chickens beautifully.”
“Doesn’t he? It seems odd enough, Pauline, to think of your having our
Chinaman.”
“He came to our house in just the right time, Molly. Mrs. Cannon was so
sick she couldn’t have worked for us another day.”
“Hop Kee is a diamond, Polly.”
“A topaz, you mean, dear, a yellow topaz. How we shall hate to give him
back to you!”
Molly snuggled her dimpled chin into her friend’s neck.
“I wouldn’t worry about that, Pauline. We sha’n’t go home these two
months.”
“Neither shall we, I hope. Papa told me yesterday that we should stay
in the canyon all during vacation. Then, if Uncle John isn’t back from
the East, auntie will go home with us to Silver Gate City.”
“I’m just longing to see your Auntie David. Are you sure she’ll come
to-day, Pauline?”
“She wrote that she should come to-day, and spend a week here at The
Old and New with Paul and me. Papa can take us all out to the camp
together.”
“Oh, dear, Polly! you won’t be here but just seven days. And I haven’t
entertained you at all. What shall we do this afternoon? Shall we go to
the bath-house?”
“I’d rather fish,” answered Pauline promptly. “If there’s anything I
dote on, it’s fishing.”
“I want to fish,” cried Harry Hobbs, from the corner of the veranda.
“Can’t I fish?”
The little newcomer was tired of stringing sea-shells with Weezy.
Sewing was girls’ work.
“Don’t you and Weezy want to dig in the sand?” asked Molly, in her
sweetest tones. “I’ll find you the dearest little pails and shovels.”
“I can dig at ’ome,” responded Harry, with a grieved look. But he did
not tease Molly. He had promised his Aunt Ruth that he wouldn’t be
troublesome.
“Oh! let him go fishing, Molly,” said Pauline, stepping out of the
hammock. “And let’s ask the boys too. They’ll take care of him.”
“If they can leave their stilts, Pauline. They’re stalking round the
back yard like--like”--
“Like storks, of course,” concluded Pauline, leaning over the veranda
rail to see the lads better. “Come, boys, won’t you go fishing?”
“Do you want to, Paul?” asked Kirke aside; for was not Paul his
especial chum?
Paul nodded, and strode to the back porch in order to dismount on its
high platform.
“Paul and I’ll meet the rest of you at the wharf, Molly,” called Kirke,
already upon the ground. “You’ll take the fishing-tackle, won’t you?
We’ll bring the bait.”
The bait was little crawfishes. The boys had to buy these of an old
fisherman on the flats, who kept a supply of live ones in a pail
covered with wet seaweed.
“It’s fun to see Mr. Tarbox catch the crawfish,” said Paul, when they
were near the fish-house. “I saw him do it last summer.”
“How does he go to work?”
“Oh! he treads a circle about six feet across in the mud. Pretty soon
the water soaks into this ring, and the little crawfish’ll crawl in.
All Mr. Tarbox has to do is to scoop them up.”
“That’s why he can afford to sell them cheap,” said Kirke.
“But he asks more in the winter,” said Paul.
Kirke bought two dozen crawfish for a nickel; and he and Paul carried
them back to the beach, where the girls and Harry were waiting.
After the hooks had been baited, the three boys and the three girls
walked out upon the wharf, Molly holding Harry by the hand. He was a
clumsy little fellow, and she was afraid he might fall over the edge.
She had no such fear for nimble-footed Weezy. Then they threw in their
lines, and waited and waited, while the sun grew hotter and hotter.
They waited in vain. Nobody had a nibble.
At last Pauline reeled in her line with a petulant motion.
“Supposing we give up fishing, and go around Bird Rocks to hunt for
abalones.”
“A good idea,” said Paul. “The tide is low, and maybe we can find
abalones enough for a soup to-morrow.”
“A soup, indeed! _Will_ you hear the boy?” cried lively Pauline. “Paul
thinks only of soup, and not at all of the beauty of the shells.”
“I’d rather have one large abalone shell than forty herrings,” said
Molly, escorting Harry to the mainland.
“Especially than forty herrings that won’t be caught,” added Kirke,
dropping his tackle into the basket. “Perhaps we shall have better luck
after the tide begins to come in.”
“I shouldn’t wonder. We’ll try again later,” said Pauline, lingering at
the end of the wharf while Kirke concealed the basket beneath it.
Then the two hastened forward to overtake Paul and Molly, who had set
out for the rocky cave beyond Bird Rocks. Weezy and Harry lagged behind
the others, Harry’s short fat legs being already weary of ploughing
through the sand.
Weezy was very polite to her little guest, and very proud to show him
the wonders of Santa Luzia, which she seemed to regard as the especial
property of herself and her family.
“This is one of our owl shells,” said she presently, bringing Harry a
limpet shell about as large as the palm of her hand.
Harry eyed it sharply.
“Where’s the _howl_?”
“On the inside. Don’t you see, Harry?”
“That? That isn’t a _howl_. It hasn’t any ’ead, Weezy.”
“Why, yes, it has, Harry. I think it has a good head, a very good head
indeed.”
What did Harry mean by finding fault with her lovely shell? For a
moment Weezy was too vexed to remember that he was her company.
By this time the others had passed beyond the ledge which shut off the
beach from the rocky cove, and Harry and Weezy were alone on the sandy
shore. Before them was the ocean, behind them the high bluff, climbed
by a wooden stairway. Near the foot of this stairway stood the wharf
where the children had just been fishing.
Weezy looked back at the wharf regretfully. She wished that she had
stayed there, instead of walking on the tiresome beach with a little
boy only six years old,--a tiny boy that didn’t like her owl shells!
Why shouldn’t she go back now to the wharf? Nobody had said she
mustn’t; and if she should go that minute nobody _could_ say it,
because there was nobody to see her. She would catch a big herring all
her own self, that she would, and make everybody stare.
Weezy’s eyes sparkled like the waves in the sunlight, her cheeks
glowed like the beach pea-blossoms at her feet.
“I’m going to fish, Harry. You can come if you want to,” said she,
turning briskly on her heel.
She wore that day a cap and dress of navy blue trimmed with bands of
gilt braid. Harry was dressed in brown, and as he bobbed along behind
her he resembled a dorbug chasing a butterfly.
“Here’s a hook with a baby crawfish on it, Harry. _You_ may have that,”
she said, with an excited air.
Then, having selected a second baited hook for herself, she skipped
along the wharf, swinging her line. This was something worth while, to
fish on her own account, without Molly or Kirke at her elbow to cry
out,--
“Take care, Weezy, don’t stick the hook into you. Take care, Weezy,
don’t fall overboard.” She hated “don’ts.” She was vexed now to hear
Harry calling out, yards behind her,--
“_Don’t_ go so fast, Weezy, I’m hawful scared!”
He had reached a broad crack that yawned between the planks, and there
he stood trembling till Weezy danced back to him.
“O Harry, before I’d be such a baby! Come along, I’ll lead you.”
But once having seen the waves tossing beneath that dreadful crack,
Harry could not be persuaded to cross it; and much against her will
Weezy stayed beside him, and fished near the shore.
“You can hold on to the post, Harry,” she said generously. “I don’t
want it, I’m not afraid.”
Harry held on like a barnacle while Weezy sat on the edge of the wharf,
dangling her feet, and moving her line slowly up and down in the way
she had seen fishermen do.
The beach was unusually deserted that afternoon, because of a railway
excursion which had attracted many people to the neighboring city.
Weezy, sitting and gazing down into the restless green water, while
she waited in vain for a nibble, began to grow sleepy. Suddenly Harry
shouted boisterously,--
“I’ve caught a fish, Weezy! Oh, oh! I’ve caught a fish!”
Weezy was at once broad awake.
“Have you, Harry? Oh, have you? Let me pull him in.”
She spoke a second too late. Harry had given the line a quick jerk
toward her, and the next thing she knew a wriggling sculpin was
flapping its slimy scales right in her face.
“Ugh! Ugh! Take it away, Harry!” she cried, dropping her own line, and
beating the fish back with both hands. “Oh, take the horrid”--
She never finished the sentence. At the last word she lost her balance,
and toppled headlong into the ocean.