Vacation with the Tucker Twins

E-text prepared by Stephen Hutcheson, Rod Crawford, Dave Morgan, Emmy, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

By NELL SPEED AUTHOR OF AT BOARDING SCHOOL WITH THE TUCKER TWINS, THE MOLLY BROWN SERIES, ETC. WITH FOUR HALF-TONE ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR O. SCOTT NEW YORK HURST & COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1916, BY HURST & COMPANY

THE BEACH.
My first impression of Willoughby Beach gave me keen disappointment. It was so sandy, so flat, and so absolutely shadeless. I longed for the green hills far away and in my heart felt I could not stand a month of the lonesome stretches of sand and the pitiless glare of the summer sun. It took great self-control and some histrionic ability for me to conceal my emotions from my enthusiastic hostesses.
The Tuckers had been coming to Willoughby for years and loved every grain of sand on the beach. They could hardly wait for the trolley from Norfolk to stop before they jumped out and raced down to the water's edge just to dabble their hands in the ocean.
My gracious me! How I hate to grow up! exclaimed Dum. One year ago I would have had off my shoes and been in bliss by this time.
Well, maybe you are too grown up to wade, but I'm not, declared Dee. However, since Zebedee has trusted us to come down and open up the cottage, I fancy we had better go do it and get things ready for our guests.
We three girls were the fore-runners of the famous beach house-party that Mr. Jeffry Tucker, father of the Heavenly Twins, had promised to give us the winter before as reward of merit if we passed all of our exams at Gresham and got through the year without any very serious mishaps. Mishaps we had had in abundance, but not very serious ones, as all of us were alive to tell the tale; and Mr. Tucker, with his eternally youthful outlook on life, seemed to feel that a scrape that turned out all right was not such a terrible matter after all.
Just so you can look me in the eye while you are telling me your troubles, it's all right, I have heard him say to his daughters.