"Right you are! I guess we'd better be getting back now. I haven't grown my merman's tail enough yet to swim with, and I've no wish to stop here all night."
Morland kept his word, and went on Monday to the cave, armed with various useful tools. He could work well enough at anything that took his fancy, and, though he never knocked in a nail at home, he toiled here in a way that would have amazed his family if they could have seen him. Landry went also, and helped in a fashion. He could not do much, but he held pieces of wood steady while his brother hammered, and he collected whole pocketfuls of shells from the beach.
Morland whistled cheerily as he worked. He wanted to give the girls a surprise, and, as they were busy at school all the week, he had the field to himself until Saturday. His artistic temperament found scope in the decoration of the cavern; fresh ideas kept occurring to him, and he enjoyed carrying them out. He felt like a kind of combination of Robinson Crusoe and the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, with a spice of poetry running through it all.
Next Saturday Lorraine, having obtained permission from her mother to go to a picnic with the Castletons, started off, basket in hand, resisting the agonized entreaties of Monica, who implored to be allowed to accompany her.
"Sorry I can't take you to-day, Cuckoo! But you see they didn't ask you—only me. Beata and Romola aren't going either."
"But why shouldn't we all go, and Madox too?" wailed Monica the spoilt.
"It's too far. Look here, I'll ask Mother to let you have some of the Castleton children to tea one day. Would that content you?"
"Ye—es!" conceded Monica doubtfully. "But it doesn't make up for this morning. I think you're ever so mean, Lorraine!"
"Poor old Cuckoo! But you know you couldn't really have come in any case, for you're to be at the dentist's by eleven."
"Strafe the old dentist! I wish he were at the bottom of the sea!" declared the youngest of the Forrester family, with temper.