Olive did not go to bed with the children. She and Uncle Dan took the trolley car which ran along the road behind the shack and went to another beach where there was a Saturday night dance. Lucy and Dora did not mind. The window of the room where Father and Mother were to sleep was close at the end of the tent.
After Mother had tucked them into their cots, Lucy went quickly to sleep but Dora lay with eyes wide open. Because of the moon the tent was bright, and through its open flaps she could see the waves breaking lazily on the shore, and hear the surge of the water. Across from the moon came a path of light.
For quite a long time Dora watched the sparkles and then suddenly she began to think about bears, not tiny silver bears like Arcturus, but real ones, full-sized and covered with hair. This was not a pleasant thought.
Dora knew there were no bears anywhere near White Beach. Still, it seemed possible that one might walk into that open tent. And then she heard a rustle outside.
Dora gave a little gasp. At first, she thought she would call Mother, but she remembered that she had wanted to sleep in the tent and that doing so was a part of camping. To be sure, she had not expected that Lucy would be asleep when she wasn’t.
After that first gasp, Dora decided not to scream. She lay still, and listened hard. In a minute, a cricket began to chirp.
When she heard the cricket, Dora felt much better. It surely would not be chirping if a bear were walking round the tent. It would not dare to make any noise. But she thought it would be comforting to have Arcturus for a bed-fellow.
The suit-case was under Lucy’s cot, so Dora got up and pulled it into the moonlight. Without any trouble she found the silver bear on his slender chain and snapped it about her neck. Then she went back to bed and did not think any longer about real bears.
Instead, she thought of fairies and of a poem she had once read in a library book. She tried hard to remember how it went.