“Look out, and don’t get any sand in my eyes,” said Betty, winking, as Lilian patted the sand around her slender figure. “Now you’ve gotten my sandal loose,” and the “mummy” wiggled her sandaled feet free from the sand coverlet and sprang up. “Come on; one more dive and then we’ll go up and get ready for the Psyche Club meeting.”
The September day had been warm and ideal for beach parties and swimming. The sandy beach was well occupied by water sprites in bathing suits of different colors. Classes had closed earlier than usual that Friday afternoon, to let the girls take advantage of the unusually warm day so late in September. Miss Randolph herself, and most of the women teachers, were down, and were having a teachers’ beach party. But it was now almost time for dinner and some of the parties were beginning to break up.
“If the teachers are having such a big beach party, the dinner will be light, I’m afraid,” said Lilian, as the girls went up to the hall.
“You forget the men,” said Isabel Hunt, who had joined them. “They didn’t have any beach parties, and will be as hungry as we are. Trust the matron to remember that.”
“Anyhow we are going to have eats at the Psyche Club. We have a birthday cake for Virgie, you know. You didn’t hint a word to her, did you, Isabel?”
“Not I, and she has forgotten that we said our first feast would be in her honor.”
“Don’t be too sure of that. Remember, she said she never had a birthday celebrated in her life.”
“Well, she thinks we have forgotten, then; nobody has said a word about her birthday.”
“Yes, there has,” said Betty. “You know she came right on to Greycliff from camp, and I asked her if they celebrated her birthday, on the first, you know, and she said that she hadn’t told anybody about it, so of course nobody did.”
“Oh, they don’t celebrate birthdays at Greycliff!”