The farmhouse where they boarded stood near a pond formed by the rushing in of the sea during some change in the sands of the beach, so here was still another water playmate for Jewel.
"I do hope," said Mr. Evringham meditatively, on the first morning that he and Jewel stood together on its green bank, "I do hope that very particular housekeeper, Nature, will let this pond alone until we go!"
Jewel looked up at his serious face with the lines between the eyes. "She wouldn't touch this great big pond, would she?" she asked.
"Ho! Wouldn't she? Well, I guess so."
"But," suggested Jewel, lifting her shoulders, "she's too busy in summer in the ravines and everywhere."
"Oh," Mr. Evringham nodded his head knowingly. "Nature looks out for everything."
"Grandpa!" Jewel's eyes were intent. "Would she ask Summer to touch this great big pond? What would she want to do it for?"
"Oh, more house-cleaning, I suppose."
The child chuckled as she looked out across the blue waves, rippling in the wind and white-capped here and there, "When you know it's washed all the time, grandpa," she responded. "The waves are just scrubbing it now. Can't you see?"
"Yes," the broker nodded gravely. "No doubt that is why she has to empty it so seldom. Sometimes she lets it go a very long time; but then the day comes when she begins to think it over, and to calculate how much sediment and one thing and another there is in the bottom of that pond; and at last she says, 'Come now, out it must go!'"