“To make us tan; want some?” asked Sim kindly.
The girl gave a little laugh. “My father would tan me if he caught me using anything like that. He says I’m so homely now, there’s no use making me worse.”
“Oh, but you’re a marvelous swimmer. I wish you’d swim with me some day,” said the sympathetic Sim. “What’s your name? Mine is Bernice Westover, but everyone calls me Sim,” she finished affably.
“Melissa Clayton,” the girl answered. “That’s a pretty thing.” She indicated a brilliantly painted wooden bracelet on Sim’s arm, the kind sponsored by the large department stores as being just the thing for beach wear because, perhaps, you couldn’t forget you had it on.
“Do you like it? You may have it,” Sim replied and slipped it off her arm. “Here, I’ve got lots of things like these, and you might like to have this.”
“Oh, can I really? I’d love it! I’ve never had a pretty thing like this in my whole life. My father thinks such things are no good and only give me wrong ideas. But I’ll take care of it always.” Melissa took the bracelet and slipped it on her tanned muscular arm, looking at it pathetically.
She wore an old, dark-blue jersey bathing suit, a little too large for her, and a white canvas belt. She had no bathing cap on, and her wet hair was beginning to curl a little as it dried in the sun. She looked at the wooden bracelet as though it were as precious as a diamond circlet, turning it around and around to admire it. A slow smile spread over her tanned face.
“Do you go to school here in the winter, Melissa?” Arden asked. This wild creature who swam like a sea nymph and smiled at a cheap wooden bracelet was something different and “terribly interesting,” in Arden’s opinion.
“I did go to school, but my father took me out last year when I turned fourteen; said I’d be getting ideas. So I don’t go any more,” Melissa replied, her white teeth gleaming and sparkling in her darkened face.
“But what do you do all winter when it’s cold and there’s no crabbing?” Sim inquired. “We’re asking you an awful lot of questions; do you mind?”