“It’s all changed,” explained Marcella. “After you left, her mother made different arrangements, to go West with one of her sons and his family, I think; and she told Peggy that if she still wanted to come East, she could. Peggy was in a great quandary, but crazy to come. I found it out through one of the girls; and so Peggy’s dear little red head will repose on either your pillow or mine, Carolyn, as you like. Peggy is up the coast a little, with the girls I mentioned, though she came with us.”
“You didn’t mention their names, Marcella, but I can guess or be surprised. If you don’t mind, Marcella, we’ll have Peggy here. Another cot in my room, or two of us in a different room, will fix it.”
“Oh, let’s all be together, Carolyn! It’s such fun!”
“Just as you say, Kathryn.”
The beach party, then, was to be full of surprises. The three girls exhausted the possible list of guests in their surmises and then concluded that it was a waste of time. Unpacking, investigating their surroundings, another swim and a walk up the shore for some distance pretty well filled the day until it was best to “rest up” for the beach party, which began at eight o’clock. “It may be a little ‘spuzzy,’ girls,” suggested Carolyn, “though Marcella did not say so. But if it is to be a sorority affair and perhaps Larry and his chum coming, not to mention others that evidently Marcella means to spring upon us, there will probably be some dressing up.”
“You don’t mean party dresses, do you?” asked Betty, “thin things? I thought at beach parties you wore sweaters or jackets and easy things to rough it in.”
“Sport things, Betty, this time. Yours are all right, and take your white sweater if you wish.”
“I ‘wager’ you know whom Marcella is going to spring upon ‘us’,” remarked Kathryn.
“I know—some,” Carolyn acknowledged. “That is the other secret.”
With great care did the three girls dress for the beach party. There was a “gorgeous” moon and a mild air. Betty scarcely knew herself, she thought, as she looked from the elevation and the shadows of the group of trees about the Gwynne house toward where a line of rollers restlessly met the beach and the light of a full moon fell across the waters. And oh, who would be at the party?