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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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.”
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.
[Illustration: OLD FATHER OCEAN RAN RIGHT IN THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR—_Page
34._]
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.