“My mother has let me take mine off,” put in a bare-legged little girl. “We won’t go into the water really at all, Mrs. Vernon. Oh, please let Bobby come along.”
The time was morning—a clear, golden, flower-scented morning in early July. The place was the sandy shore of Long Beach. There were few bathers about, as it was Monday, when the week-enders had returned to their several occupations, while the pleasure-seekers living or lodging there were resting from the strenuous gayety of Sunday.
Mrs. Vernon, a beautiful young woman, in half-mourning, was strolling with her only child and the girl, an acquaintance made on the train, along the sands. They were all transients, presently to take a train north.
Bobby Vernon was a highly interesting child to look at. Rather small for his age, he was lithe and shapely. His complexion was delicately fair, his chestnut hair rather long. All these things were enough to attract attention; but above and beyond these were the features. Blue eyes, cupid mouth, a sensitive upper lip, an eloquent, chubby little nose—all had this in common that they were expressive of his every passing thought and emotion. He had a face, in a word, at once speaking and engaging.
The girl, Peggy Sansone, a year or two older, was a brunette, a decided contrast. She was a chance acquaintance, made by Bobby on the Pullman, with the result that, once they had exchanged a few words, there was no more sleeping during the daylight hours for the other occupants of that car.
Mrs. Vernon felt in her heart it would be more prudent to refuse the request. She feared that she was making a mistake. But she was just then preoccupied and sad. Now, sadness is weakening.
“Well, Bobby, if I give you permission, you won’t go far? And you’ll be back at the station in half an hour, and won’t get lost?”
“I know the way back to the station,” volunteered the girl. “And I’ll promise you to see him back myself. You know, I’ve got my watch.” Here Peggy, with the sweet vanity of childhood, held up for view her dainty wrist watch.
“Whoopee!” cried Bobby, jumping into his mother’s arms, planting a kiss on her brow, dropping down to the sand and, apparently all in one motion, taking off shoes and socks.
Light-heartedly, hand in hand with the girl, he pattered down the sands to the water. The two little ones radiated joy and youth and life. To them the coming half-hour was to be, so they thought, “a little bit of heaven.” The girl had no premonition of the saddest day of her childhood; the boy no thought of the forces of earth and water that were about to change so strangely his and his mother’s life.