Jean, Marjory, Mabel, and Henrietta were having a glorious time in the rippling blue lake. When they were tired of splashing about to scare the abundant minnows, they built wonderful castles in the sand. Mabel's were square and solid, like Mabel herself; Jean's were lofty with aspiring towers and turrets, and Henrietta's were honeycombed with fearsome dungeons. Marjory built long streets of tiny, modern, and excessively neat dwellings.
After that, they discovered that the beach near the river's mouth was strewn with pebbles of every hue known to pebbles. There were agates, bits of glittering quartz and granite, and many brown, green, or yellow stones threaded prettily with a network of white. They wanted to gather them all to carry back to Bettie, but contented themselves with about a bushel—all that their four skirts would hold. But they found to their surprise that they were anchored to the ground; that it wasn't possible to rise with the heavy burden. As for carrying the glittering hoard, that was clearly impossible, too; so they heaped their treasure on the sand and ran to look at the river where it joined the lake.
Never was there a more companionable river. At the mouth it was only a yard wide and just deep enough to cover one's ankles. A little way up, it spread out as wide as a street, but there it barely covered one's toes. Farther up, there were big, moss-covered stones and the water grew perceptibly deeper—up to one's knees. Still further, and the river grew wide and deep and darkly mysterious, where great trees cast brown and green shadows over the russet surface.
"Ugh!" shuddered Henrietta, at this point, "let's go back—I like it better where it's narrow."
"So do I," agreed Jean. "If there were crocodiles in this part of the country, that's where they'd live."
"Let's build a bridge across the narrowest place," proposed Marjory.
All about were stones and driftwood. The girls built a beautiful bridge and sat afterwards on the beach to admire their handiwork; but very soon the quiet water stealthily washed the sand away from the foundation stones and in a little while the river's mouth was twice as wide as it had been before the bridge, now floating lakeward, was built.
"I could stay here forever," said Henrietta, "there are so many things to do—nice, foolish things, like sand-castles, bridges that float away, and stones that look like diamonds when they're wet and like just stones when they're dry. I'd like to live here."
"So would I," agreed Jean.