It was the signal for a general descent into the pool whose waters, cooler than the air, were so refreshing. Nobody seemed to care about diving, but they swam a little, had mild races which, no one cared much about beating, and sat on the steps that led down into the water or perched again on the upper rim of cement. “What makes us so doleful?” lazily asked Carolyn.
“Oh, it’s the weather, and school’s being ’most out,” returned Kathryn Allen, who looked like a little red gypsy in her scarlet bathing suit and cap. “I feel just like splashing around and doing nothing unless to keep from being drowned.”
“I have enough energy for that,” said Betty, swimming off.
“What do you suppose we’ll be doing this time next year?” asked Carolyn.
“My, you’re looking ahead, Carolyn! By that time we’ll be through being sophomores, or almost.”
Betty curved around and drew herself up on the steps where Carolyn and Kathryn were. “I’ve decided, to do something different every year,” she said. “I can’t do it all all the time, you see. I’ll keep up swimming, and some music, and then one year I’ll take riding, and another year something else–I think I will, anyhow.”
“What are you going to do this summer, Betty?” Carolyn asked. “We’re going away for July and August, I think I told you.”
“Yes. I heard you speak of it. It will be wonderful to be on the ocean beach, Carolyn. But we’re going to have Mother go to my grandmother’s on a big farm, where they have tenants to do the work, mostly. It will be good for Amy Lou, whose been ‘peaked’ lately, since it grew so warm. Dick and Doris are to take turns going, I think, and I’m to keep house for Father. But that will mean lots of picnics and little trips out places for our dinner and then something is to happen for me, he said, when Mother comes back. But they won’t tell me what it is. So I have a nice mystery to look forward to, or try to discover.”
“Do you mean that either your brother or sister will stay with you?”
“I think they’re going to try that, though they are twins and like to be at least in the same town. But no telling. In our family we try experiments and if they don’t work we do something else. Nobody carries out anything just for meanness, or because they said they were going to.”