"Come with me," said Winnie, "and we'll have a game of golf just to ourselves, with two sticks and an indiarubber ball. You can't think what fun it is. I was trying on the common a little while ago. Will you come too, Patty?"
"No, thanks," said Patty. "I should only spoil sport. I mean to go down on to the sands again. You can call to me when you've finished, and perhaps I'll come up; but I won't promise, because I like the shore the very best of all."
CHAPTER XIV
On the Rocks
"Our train will start at half-past six," said Miss Lincoln, when tea was finished, and the girls were standing in little groups in the hotel garden, wondering what to do next. "All who like may go on to the beach again, or on to the cliffs, but no one must walk farther than the white farm near the flagstaff. You must return immediately you are told, and be at the station by a quarter past six."
The girls dispersed, some to wander along the shore to find a few more shells, mermaids' purses, or strips of ribbon seaweed; some to climb to the top of the cliff by the flagstaff; and others to play games on a piece of common near the white farm that Miss Lincoln had appointed as a boundary beyond which they must not venture. Patty, who was hunting for sea anemones in the small pools among the rocks, noticed Muriel and her friends, Maud, Vera, and Kitty, hurrying as fast as they could along the beach in the opposite direction from the village.
"Where are you going?" called Phyllis Chambers, who was engaged in taking down the bathing tent.
"Oh! nowhere in particular," they replied, stopping as if they had been rather caught; "only just for a little stroll, to say good-bye to the waves."
"You mustn't go beyond the next point of rock; Miss Lincoln said so."
"Miss Lincoln said nothing about the shore. She said the white farm on the cliff," replied Maud, rather sulkily.