“But—but what shall we do?”
Marian reached down into her boots, where her heart had sunk, and pulled up a smile by main force and put it on her lips. A connoisseur in smiles would have known at a glance that it never grew there of its own accord, but Jennie was only eight and was not versed in artificial smiles.
“Well, my dear,” said the big sister, “we can’t walk back and we can’t swim back, so I guess we shall just have to Robinson Crusoe it here till some one comes after us. When they find we don’t come home, they will hunt for us, of course. See here,” she added, briskly, pulling out the big pail Mr. Cunningham had lent them for clams, “you children take this pail and get some crabs. I will build a fire, and we will have dinner right away before anything else awful happens to us.”
The children, reassured by her tone and smile, took the pail and trotted off down the beach. They had caught crabs on the little beaches of the Rosalies and understood the business. Even Davie got a stick and landed a few.
Marian gathered some sticks and built a fire in the shade of a big rock. She had it well started when Delbert came back to her.
“I can see something black away out in the Gulf; probably it is him,” he said.
“Probably,” she answered.
They brought the things up to the fire and began to unpack the basket.
“I don’t see why he did it!” finally burst forth Delbert with clouded face and quivering lips.
“Well,” said Marian quietly, “he evidently was a different kind of man from what we supposed. There are a few such people in the world.”