"Oh, but do let us! Anyway, I'll bring Nero, and we'll have fine fun with him. If you're on the beach first you must wait for me, and if I'm there first I'll wait for you."
"Very well. I'll come if I can. I hope your face does not hurt you much?" —and Dick regarded his cousin's disfigured countenance with real concern.
"Oh, no!" she responded, squinting in a vain attempt to look at the scratch on her nose, "nothing to speak of! I wonder if grandfather will want to know what I've been doing; if he does, I think I shall tell him, because he likes us to speak out, and if he asks you, you'll be sure to tell the truth."
"Why, of course," Dick returned; "you wouldn't wish me to tell a lie, would you?"
"No; but you might say I fell into a bramble-bush and scratched my face, without saying the donkey pitched me there."
"That would be only part of the truth," Dick objected, looking decidedly uneasy.
"Well, you needn't bother, I'm going to tell about the donkey," Ruth assured him, "and if grandfather is angry, I can't help it. I hope, though, he won't make me stay indoors this afternoon; and I must manage to get away from Lionel. Come down on the beach as early as you can!"
Dick said he would; and after that the two children went their separate ways. Going up the village street Dick overtook Granfer Cole, who had spent his morning on the beach, having had a most pleasant and exciting time in recounting his experiences of storms of bygone years to an admiring audience.
"I never saw one to beat last night's gale," he told Dick. "To think that the east cliff is gone! Dear, dear! I mind when I was a youngster how I used to go shrimping around the rocks that way at low tide, and what a powerful lot of shrimps I used to catch!"
"Do you think it likely that there is an entrance to the secret passage in that direction?" Dick questioned eagerly.