“Yes, Beth; I’m not myself at all. Here,—take these and look at those towering rocks with them.” Sarita Moore handed her fine glasses, all shining and new, to the older girl, who directed them toward a distant pile of rocks. There two rose high, irregularly decreasing in circumference, and at this distance apparently pointed at their tops. Below them massed the other rocks of the dark headland.
Elizabeth looked long and steadily. “Steeple Rocks!” she murmured. “I wish that I owned them! But I would give them a better name. I’d call them Cathedral Rocks. Doesn’t the whole mass make you think of the cathedrals,—the cathedrals that you and I are going to see some day, Leslie?”
The third girl of the group now took the glasses which her sister offered. “Sometimes, Beth, I can’t follow the lines of your imagination; but it doesn’t take much this time to make a cathedral out of that. Are you happy, Beth?” There was a tone of anxiety in the question.
“Yes, child. Who could help being happy here? Look at that ocean, stretching out and away—into eternity, I think,—and the clouds—and the pounding of the surf. Think, girls! It’s going to put us to sleep to-night!”
“Unless it keeps us awake,” suggested Leslie, “but I’m all lifted out of myself, too, Beth. Imagine being here all summer! Look at Dal, Sarita.”
Leslie pointed toward a masculine figure standing on the beach not far in advance of them. “It’s ‘what are the wild waves saying?’ to Dal all right!”
Dalton Secrest, who had preceded his two sisters and their friend in their visit to the beach and the tossing waves, stood facing the sea, his hands in his pockets, his tall young body straight before the strong breeze. He heard the girls’ voices above the noise of the surf, as they came more closely behind him, and turned with a smile as his sister had done.
“What great thoughts are you thinking Dal?” Sarita queried.
“Sorry that I can’t claim any just this minute, Sarita. I was thinking about what fish there are in the sea for me. When I’m not building the shack I’m going to fish, girls, and I was wondering if the bay wouldn’t be the best place for that.”