“Look, Anne!” interrupted Dick, “that island out there is where Captain Kidd is said to have hidden his treasure. Maybe we shall find it this summer, who knows?”
“Pooh! They tell that same story about every island off the coast.” Nancy snubbed him.
“Well, he did hide it somewhere, didn’t he?” insisted Dick. “And nobody has ever found it yet? So!”
“This is the place where Gilda fell overboard while we were fishing yesterday.” Norma pointed out the place.
“Ze wasser was ve’y damp!” Gilda shrugged with a little frown. And they all began to laugh, even Anne, at the funny expression.
“And here’s where we go in bathing,” said Beverly, showing Anne a little sandy beach as they passed. “It is cold, oh, so cold! But it is fun, when you get used to it.”
“We had a heated pool at Idlewild,” said Anne dubiously. “I don’t like bathing in cold sea-water.”
“It’s the way we take our daily baths,” said Nancy. “There isn’t any running water at the camp, you know. There’s just the spring outside the kitchen. We have to bring in what we want in buckets, the way the first settlers did. Oh, it’s quite primitive, Anne!”
“No bathrooms then? No electric lights, I suppose?” Everybody began to laugh. Dick fished something from his pocket and flashed a torch in Anne’s face. “Of course we have electricity,” he said. “Everybody is his own firefly.”
Anne looked more and more pained at these revelations. They were approaching a point dark with fir trees, that made out into the water beside a tiny cove. There was a strip of pebbly beach, with a landing pier, from the end of which a path went wavering up the bank and disappeared into the woods. Anne caught a glimpse, through the trees, of a low log shack, and some brown canvas tents that seemed to blend in like a part of the woods.