While Dora was thinking about the poetry, she watched the edge of the sea and thought she saw one fairy creep out and shake the spray from its wings. She wasn’t quite sure, for it might have been a sandpiper. When Olive came in softly, about midnight, Dora was as sound asleep as Lucy.
Next morning, the sun touched Dora’s cot rather than either of the others, just as the moon had done. When she opened her eyes, the sun was just above the horizon, its lower rim not clear from the water. Never before had she seen it so tremendous! It looked a perfect elephant of a sun.
A soft little breeze came into the tent, blowing straight from sea. Sandpipers really were running along the edge of the foam and the beach was washed hard and smooth. Not a trace was left of Dora’s house except a huddle of the larger pebbles. Every footmark was gone. A perfectly new and fresh playground lay before them.
Just then Lucy woke and she and Dora looked at the sunrise sky and talked in whispers because Olive was still asleep. Her hand was tucked under one cheek, and a long braid of hair lay across her pillow.
They decided to get up and dress very quietly. It was easy to be quiet because the sand under foot muffled every step, and easy to be quick because they had very few clothes to put on.
Just as they were dressed, Lucy stopped short. “O my!” she said in a whisper, and stood on one foot.
Twisted about her bare toes was a little silver chain.
Dora looked at it. Then she put her hand to her neck. Arcturus and his leash were gone. That was her silver chain tangled in Lucy’s toes, but where was the bear? She gave a frightened sob, which woke Olive.
Olive sat up in her cot and looked from one to the other. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
Between sobs, Dora explained that she had felt lonely after Lucy went to sleep and had taken Arcturus into bed with her. When she awoke, she never thought of him. There was the chain, but where was Arcturus?