Betty gave her head a funny little toss, threw the raincoat down to one of them and slid, ran, jumped, and tumbled down the sheer bank, landing in a heap on a mound of soft sand that flew up in a dusty cloud around the party.
“I’m sorry,” she sputtered, wiping the dust out of her eyes. “Sorry that I was late, I mean. The sand is Don’s fault, because he dared me. You see, I had to mend all Will’s stockings, because he’s going off to-morrow on a little business trip. And then I had to see to my fire, and remind Dorothy that she is now in charge of mother and the house. Beat you out to the raft, Mary.”
Mary Hooper shook off her share of the sand-cloud resignedly. “All right,” she said. “Only of course I’ve been in once already, and I’m rather tired.”
“Tired nothing,” scoffed one of the Benson girls. “You paddled around the cove for five minutes an hour ago, poor thing! That’s all the exercise you’ve had to-day. Betty’s the one who ought to be tired, with all the cooking and scrubbing and mending she does. Only she’s a regular young steam engine——”
Betty leaned forward and tumbled Sallie Benson over on her back in the sand. “Hush!” she said. “I don’t work hard, and I’m not tired, and besides, I shall probably lose the race. Come along, Mary.”
The race was a tie, but Betty declared that Tom Benson got in her way on purpose, and Mary Hooper retorted that Sally splashed her like a whole school of porpoises. So they finally agreed to try again going back, and then they sat on the raft in the sunshine, throwing sticks for Mary’s setter to swim after, and watching the Ames boys dive, until Will appeared on the shore shouting and waving a letter wildly—an incentive to Betty’s getting back in a hurry that caused Mary to declare the return race off also, especially as she had lost it.
“Didn’t want to bother you,” explained Will amiably, “but Cousin Joe drove me out in his car, and I thought that maybe the chief cook——”
Betty seized the letter and ran. “I knew things were going to happen,” she murmured as she flopped up the beach stairway. “But there’s an extra tomato that my prophetic soul told me to peel, and lots of soup, and lots of ice-cream. Oh, dear, I’m getting this letter so wet that I shan’t ever be able to read it.” She held it out at arm’s length and looked at the address. It was typewritten, and there was a printed “Return to Harding College” in the corner. “Nothing but an old circular, I suppose,” she decided, and laid it carefully down in a spot of yellow sunshine on the floor of her room to dry off.
Of course there was no time to open it until dinner was cooked and eaten; and then Cousin Joe piled his big car full of laughing, chattering young people and drove them off through the pine woods in the moonlight.
Betty was in front with Cousin Joe. “Things look so much more enchanted and fairylike if you’re in front,” she explained as she climbed in.