"Antonia?" said Wood. "I thought she went to bed at nine."
It appeared that Antonia had formed the habit lately of sleeping on the beach—at least for the earlier part of the night—just digging a hole and curling up there. Her mother thought it an interesting, primitive, healthy sort of instinct.
"And yet," she added thoughtfully, as if she knew she were a little finicky, "I don't like to lock up the house until she comes in."
"I think you're right," said her brother. These were the things that terrified him so—a little girl out in the blackness of that beach in her pajamas. How could he go to Mexico and leave her? He rose and went to the edge of the piazza, which rested on the dunes.
He could see nothing but the stars.
"Shall I call her?" he said.
"I hate to wake her; but—yes, just give a call."
He shouted, and in a few seconds a faint, cheerful hullo reached them, and a little figure appeared over the dunes.
"Were you asleep, darling?" said her mother.