"That child is lonely," Mrs. Marley had remarked, as the elders left the children gathered around the fire. "It will do her good to play a little with our boys and girls; she needs companions of her own age."
"I'm through now," Ella said hastily, popping her candy into her mouth. "I didn't know I was eating so many."
"You didn't—not half as many as the boys," Jess assured her. "And there's a pound left in that box we haven't touched."
Ella, however, could not be persuaded to eat any more, so they put more driftwood on to burn and leaned back to watch the fire.
"I tell you what would be fun to do," said Carrie, helping herself to a marshmallow from the freshly opened box and apparently forgetting what she had just said. "Let's each write a message on a strip of paper and put them in that tin box. Then throw it in the ocean and perhaps it will be picked up fifty years from now."
"By the Chinese, who can't read it," Fred suggested.
"Then they can have the messages translated," retorted Carrie.
Artie's mind approved thoroughly of this idea, and he was eager to try it. He was quite sure that a waiting world would be eager to hear from them fifty years hence.
"Well, here's a pencil," said Fred grudgingly. "But I haven't any paper."
"Tear up the labels on the candy boxes," Jess suggested. "We can write on the back."