“Then you’ll have to stay starved, young man,” said his mother, laughing, “because not a basket is to be opened till the coals are ready for cooking.”
“Then let’s make a sand castle,” suggested Betty and she ran down to a smooth place on the beach, away from possible smoke, and began molding the white sand.
That pleased Mary Jane. She hadn’t forgotten the fun she had playing on the beach in Florida, and while this beach was different—it didn’t have any of the pretty shells or funny little crawdads she had found on the Florida beach—still it had lovely white sand and dainty little waves and was quite the nicest place for play that Mary Jane had seen.
“I’ll tell you what let’s do,” suggested Alice, as she saw that all the children were going to play in the sand, “let’s each build a castle and make it any way we like best and then when they’re all finished, have an exhibition and everybody look and see which is the best.”
“All right, let’s,” agreed the children and they set to work.
Mary Jane chose for her castle a place down close by the water. She loved the nearness of the waves and the thrill of knowing that maybe, if she didn’t watch out, a wave would come up really close and get her wet. Betty picked out a spot nearer the fire on the side away from the smoke and Alice chose a place where a few pretty pebbles would give her material with which to pave a “moat” she intended to make.
And then everybody set to work. So busy were they that Linn had to tend the fire all by himself and Ed forgot he was hungry.
Before very long that beach looked like a picture book. Towers and ditches and castles and bridges were where flat sand had been a few minutes before. The Holden children had made many a sand house and they knew just how to pack the damp sand so it would stay in place and just how to put a small board here and there to hold a second story or a tower straight and tall.
But with all their experience, Alice’s castle was as pretty as theirs, or at any rate she thought it was, and Mary Jane’s was quite wonderful. She smoothed off the “garden” in front of her palace, stuck in a few sticks for flowers, made a pebbly path down to the tiny lake she had scooped out at one side and then shouted, “Mine’s done! Look at mine!” and stepped aside so all could see her handiwork.