It gave them plenty to talk about and plan for, at all events. As Ruth said the following morning, the summer was not half long enough for all the things they planned to do. They rose early, any time between five and six. Nobody except a clam could have slept with the sun coming up like a great, golden blossom behind Bald Bluff, and the sea running along the beach with little waves like dancing feet, calling to one to come and play too.
They tried over and over again to divide each day systematically, but, as Polly said, “current events tripped them up.” Aunty Welcome protested that she would do the washing, ironing, cooking, and kitchen work, but not a tap more; so each took care of her own room, and Polly looked out for the living-room besides. Sue had chosen the veranda for her special charge, and she kept it spotless. They had brought along two hammocks, and had found another one rolled up with the porch mats under a window seat. The three hung out on the veranda temptingly, and through the long warm afternoons, when they were not sailing, the girls would sit out there and make all sorts of decorative things out of the shells in their collection, while Ruth read aloud. The very week of their arrival, she had gone across the bay with Nancy in the Pirate and had discovered the village circulating library.
“I do believe, Grandma,” Polly had said, merrily, when she saw her returning with a brand new book, “that if you landed on the coast of South Africa, you’d ask the first gorilla you met, very politely, if he would please direct you to the nearest circulating library.”
But Ruth refused to be teased about her hobby, so the girls desisted. She loved books, however, and would have walked all the way to Eastport in order to get a fresh one. So with her rimless eyeglasses planted firmly on the bridge of her nose, the nose that turned up ever so little at the world in anxious inquiry, she smiled placidly at Polly, and hugged a new volume to her heart every time she went over the bay.
“You’re all ready enough to listen while I read aloud, just the same,” she told them, when they all settled themselves out on the porch, and called for the after-dinner reading. No one contradicted her. Polly was over in her favorite hammock at the southwesterly corner, her lap full of shells, and some sandpaper, with which she was trying to polish their outer side. Sue, Isabel, and Crullers leaned against the railing, so that their hair would hang over and dry in the sunlight. Only two of the girls wore caps when in bathing, and Aunty Welcome declared that their hair would be fairly pickled before they reached home.
“It’s ‘Treasure Island’ this time, girls,” Ruth announced.
“Smugglers’ Cove,” murmured Sue, mischievously. “See what an effect it had on her, oh, dear; oh, dear.”
Ruth uttered a sudden exclamation, and slipped into the house.
“There was another parcel in our mail box to-day,” she said, as she came back. “I forgot to give it to you.”
“This makes the fourth,” Polly declared, taking it from her, and handling it gingerly. “And they all come from Smugglers’ Cove. The first one had new magazines in it, and some patent fish hooks that Sue ran off with, and we haven’t seen since.”