Polly giggled. Artie had been responsible for the idea of a raft. He had read of a raft—in a book—and nothing would do but that he must make one this summer. Fred and Ward had discouraged him good-naturedly, but at intervals Artie voiced his desire to build a raft.
"Let's go see if we can find what they're up to," Margy suggested. "They always want to know our secrets, and yet they have dozens they never tell us."
Margy was exaggerating slightly. Indeed, Fred had once declared that she found out everything he ever tried to hide from her, so it was safer to tell her and let her help.
Polly and Jess had no objection to walking as far as the fishing pier. They would cause no worry at the cottage if they did not come back till lunch time and they were quite as curious as Margy to see what the boys were doing. For three mornings the boys had vanished from the breakfast table and, turning up at bathing time, had resolutely declined to give a hint as to how they had been spending the hours.
"I don't see them anywhere," said Jess disappointedly, when they had walked to the pier.
"We'll walk under it and look on the other side," Polly replied. "They may be further down the beach."
Margy and Jess scrambled under the heavy iron beams, absorbed in getting through quickly. But Polly's quick eyes spied something that she had never seen before, though she had been under the pier a dozen times.
"Look!" she cried, stopping suddenly. "Somebody's been digging here."
There was a huge mound of sand heaped up between two beams and a circular pit dug carefully around it. A board was laid across a hole in the mound.
"That's Artie's shovel," Polly whispered. "I'll bet this is what they've been doing."