Neither Lucy nor Dora could guess how this frame was to help find the silver bear. Uncle Dan and Olive took out of the tent the three cots and the single chair. Olive shook each rag rug carefully.
Then Uncle Dan carried the frame into the tent. He set it up and lifted a shovelful of sand and threw it against the screen bottom. All the sand went straight through, but the pebbles, even some smaller than Arcturus, fell back in a pile. It would not be possible for Arcturus to go through that wire screening.
Uncle Dan took every single bit of loose sand from the space covered by the tent, and threw it against the screen. Olive and Lucy and Dora watched the pebbles which fell back. Arcturus could not escape three pairs of eyes. But finally there was no more loose sand, only a kind of stiff dry clay, and no Arcturus.
Dora tried hard not to cry but she felt much grieved. It did not seem possible that the bear could evade a search like that. She managed to thank Uncle Dan, who was as sorry as Olive that it had been of no use. They smoothed the sand floor and Uncle Dan returned the screen and the shovel. No, there was nothing left but to think of Arcturus as being a sand-bear now, enjoying himself by the sea.
Then they went swimming, and how Uncle Dan and Father Merrill did laugh at Olive. Olive said that it was Sunday morning and that she usually went to church instead of into the ocean. She should take with her a cake of salt-water soap and call it a bath. She wasn’t sure it was quite right to go swimming just for fun. She should feel more comfortable about it if she took the soap.
Mrs. Merrill did not laugh at Olive. She said she was glad that Olive liked to keep Sunday different from other days.