“It won’t do to stay too long the first time,” she said. “Put on your old ginghams and you may go barefooted and wade all you like, but you have been in the water long enough for to-day.”
It seemed hard to come out when Uncle Dan and Olive were still jumping waves and even diving through them, but it would be fun to go without shoes or stockings and to run into the edge of the water whenever they wished. Besides, Mother herself came out when they did.
Lucy and Dora dressed quickly. They hung their wet clothes on a line which Mother stretched from the corner of the shack to the rear tent pole. Something was cooking on the oil stove which smelled very good.
“When will dinner be ready?” asked Lucy. “I am as hungry as can be.”
“It will be ready before the others are dressed,” said her mother. “I wish they would come out.”
Strange to say, Uncle Dan was willing to leave the ocean before Olive. Father Merrill grew cold and waded ashore, but Olive did not look cold at all. It was Uncle Dan who seemed shivery and whose lips turned blue. Olive ran into the tent and presently threw out her suit. Dora hung it on the line, after brushing off what sand she could manage.
What a funny dinner that was! Nobody had more than one spoon, and some of the spoons were not a size any one would choose to eat with. There were just forks enough to go around and Lucy and Dora had to share a knife. But this was only the more sport.
Olive’s hair was wet and tied with a ribbon, so she looked like a little girl with it hanging down her back. There were not chairs for everybody, and Uncle Dan sat on an old crate which kept cracking and acting as though it were going to break and let him down on the floor. But Dan didn’t care if it did.
“Alice Palmer lives in a house somewhere at this beach,” said Lucy contentedly. “It is much more fun to camp.”
After dinner Mrs. Merrill told them all to go down on the beach and she would wash the dishes.