It was a very smoky background for a pathetically shy little figure as Kitty advanced over the white sands toward the triple steps of the largest of the wooden camps, open at one side to the airs of heaven. But it needed no backing of ancestral smokes, that shrinking figure in the childish, flapping hat and dotted muslin.
For Olive, still in her wet bathing-suit, with her dark hair hanging, loose and long, about her, saw the little stranger coming.
The childish dress, rustic and old-fashioned, but dainty and demure, the pretty dimples, each nesting a freckle, the liquid, amber-brown eyes in which that tiny flashing minnow seemed to come and go with shy feeling—not sure of its owner’s reception—all these simply reached out and took Olive by the heart, bringing her to her feet in a jump, the water swishing in her bathing shoes.
“Why! it’s Kitty,” she cried. “Captain Andy’s Kitty! Oh, Kitty, we’re just so glad to see you! We were dying for you to come!”
No distant or smoky welcome this! Kitty flirted her wide, starched skirts as might a pleased bird its tail. The happy water rose to her eyes. She cast one far-away mental glance to Mary-Jane Peg and the orchard with its bandaged trees as she felt Olive’s wet arm about her shoulders.
“Oh! I must kiss you,” said Olive Deering, “although it’s too bad to wet you all up, Kitty. We’ve been watching for you all day, ever since Captain Andy told us he was going to fetch you here in his motor-boat. Captain Andy’s so good to us,” breathing briny gratitude; “he’s always on watch to see that we don’t go too far out when bathing, those of us who can’t swim very well yet.”
“Oh! you’re coming on—you’re coming on!” encouraged the mariner, whose camp name was Menokigábo.
“And he has taught us a lot about rowing and steering, a little about sailing, too!”
“Can’t do much with a sailboat here; it’s too near the mouth of the river. Tide’s too tricky,” remarked the captain. “That’s the bar where those curly breakers are, Kitty,” dropping his hand on his niece’s arm and whirling her round to face a white line of breakers about a mile down-river; beyond which flared the blue breadth of the comparatively open sea. “That’s the sand-bar where river an’ bay meet. Pretty rough water there, breaking on the Neck—the sandy neck of those other sand-dunes on the opposite side of the river! Mustn’t get carried down there in a boat, any of you girls! Quicksands, too! The Neck is studdled with ’em.”
“What does ‘studdled’ mean?” Olive’s briny lips blew the words like a pickled kiss into Kitty’s ear.