“I believe you want to stay a week, Amos Cary!” exclaimed his sister.
“I’d just as soon stay as not,” said Amos, “if I can find some rotten wood like the Indians use to start a fire; but it isn’t much use to look for it until things begin to dry up.”
Amos, followed closely by the little girls, went up the bank and toward a place where grew a thicket of small pines. “We can break off a lot of these branches and carry them down to the shore,” he said, “and fix some beds of them under one side of the dory. It will be better than sleeping on the sand.”
They made several trips back and forth to the boat with armfuls of pine boughs until they each had quite a pile, long and wide enough for a bed, and high enough to keep them well off the sand. But Amos was not satisfied.
“This sand-bank makes a good back for a house,” he said; “now if we could only build up sides, and fix some kind of a roof, it would make a fine house.”
“Won’t the dory do for one side?” asked Anne.
“No,” said Amos, “but we can pile up heaps of sand here on each side of our beds, right against this sand-bank, and that will make three sides of a house, and then we’ll think of something for the roof.”
So they all went to work piling up the sand. It was hard work, and it took a long time before the loose sand could be piled up high enough for Anne and Amanda to crouch down behind.
“I’m dreadful hungry,” said Amanda, after they had worked steadily for some time; “let’s rest and eat some mussels and beach-plums,” and Amos and Anne were both quite ready to stop work.
“It must be past noon now,” said Amos, looking at the sun, “and there hasn’t a boat come in sight.”