“Please take a picture of me, Carolyn, right in the ocean, to send to my father!”
“Daddy’s little goldfish among the sharks?” teased Carolyn.
“Ow! You don’t have those, I hope.”
“I never heard of any around here,” laughed Carolyn, “and we’ve been near this place before, you know. You stay within bounds and you’ll be all right.”
Supper, a real New England supper served by a cook and a maid already there to take care of them, came next, then a stroll around the grounds, whose limits were uncertain as they strayed off into a little grove chiefly of spruces and pines. Hasty letters home were written by Kathryn and Betty and a little later three young heads, on as many different pillows in Carolyn’s big room, drowsed off to the distant booming of the surf.
In the morning, Betty blinked her eyes and wondered where she was. She must hurry to get up, for the alarm had gone off and she would be late for school! For a moment all the old feelings of wanting to stay in bed and having to get up to get ready for school came over her. Then she laughed and sat up, looking across at the two other cots, where Carolyn, by whose bed the alarm was still ringing intermittently, was rubbing her eyes and reaching down to the floor to shut it off. Kathryn sat up suddenly in bed and asked, “Where’s the fire?”
But three bathing suits had been laid out ready to be put on. They had planned a cold dip before breakfast and fearing that they would not be wakened in time by more or less weary parents or maid and cook who had been instructed not to have breakfast too early, Carolyn had set the alarm. The sun was streaming into their East room, chosen by Carolyn, who wanted to “hear the sea.”
Wrapped in their warmest coats over their bathing suits, the girls made their way, by a side exit of which Carolyn knew, down a little hill, down a few steps, then to the beach not far from the accredited bathing place where Carolyn said they should do their swimming. A few other people were on the beach for the same purpose.
It was an icy dip this morning and Betty privately thought that she would prefer the tropics; but at that it was the great old Atlantic Ocean and she missed none of the thrill that she had expected. A short swim in the unaccustomed element, salty and “different,” and Betty was ready for the quick return to the Gwynne cottage, where a shower bath and a vigorous rub put her in a glow. Three merry faces met Mr. and Mrs. Gwynne at the breakfast table.
“Did you have your early dip, girls?” inquired Mr. Gwynne.