She held Patience's abbreviated bathing suit skirt with one hand.
"Where are you heading for, baby?" she asked.
"Mardy! Mardy!" screamed Patience, tugging at her leash.
"Oh, rats, it's Margery Marshall. Look at the duds on her. She makes me sick," groaned Kent.
"She's crazy about little Patience," answered Lydia, "so I put up with a lot from her."
She loosed her hold on Patience. The baby trundled along the sand to meet the little girl in an immaculate white sailor suit, who approached pushing a doll buggy large enough to hold Patience. She ran to meet the baby and kissed her, then allowed her to help push the doll carriage.
"Mardy tum! Mardy tum!" chanted Patience.
Margery's black hair was in a long braid, tied with a wide white ribbon. Margery's hands were clean and so were her white stockings and shoes. She brought the doll's carriage to pause before Lydia and Kent and gazed at them appraisingly out of bright black eyes—beautiful eyes, large and heavily lashed. Kent's face was dirty and sweat streaked. His red bathing suit was gray with sand and green with grass stain. On his head he wore his favorite headgear, a disreputable white cotton cap with the words "Goldenrod Flour Mills" across the front.
"Well," he said belligerently, to Margery, "do you see anything green?"
Margery shrugged her shoulders. "Watcha playing?"
"Nothing! Want to play it?" replied Lydia.