She could swim wonderfully well for so small a girl, and she managed her boat with skill.
After another approving glance at the rows of softly tinted shells, she ran out onto the beach, and soon in her boat she was gliding along on the shallow water near the shore, her oars moving with slow precision, keeping time to the song that she was singing, or rather to the songs that she was singing, for she was making a gay little medley of many familiar tunes.
The light breeze lifted her long, waving hair, and let it flutter back from her face, it kissed her cheeks, and made them pink like the shells that she valued most.
The great gulls hovered overhead, flapping their wings, and circling about as if trying to determine what sort of little being it was that boasted such long tresses.
Skimming over a bit of shallow water, she chanced to look down and there, on the sandy bottom, was a shell, different in shape from any in her collection.
"I must have it," she cried, and in a second she had drawn the oars into the boat, had slipped into the shallow water, and having pushed the light boat toward the shore, swam along under water until she came to the spot where the shell lay.
She came up to the surface to get the air, laughed, and swam downward again, snatched the coveted shell, and then made her way to where the little boat rocked on the waves.
She was in it in a moment, and again plying the oars, her shell on the seat opposite that on which she was sitting.
She had dressed herself in her little bathing suit, and she laughed as she saw that the warm breeze playing with her hair, was drying it, while her blouse and skirt were dripping and would continue to drip until hung up where the wind could blow through them.
Rarely a day passed that Sprite did not spend with Polly and Rose, but to-day they were away, and she must amuse herself. They were her two dearest playmates, but the dancing waves were the next best.