“Ted and Kate and myself.”
“I’ve only tried swimming in fresh water,” said Ted.
“You will find salt water easier. It is buoyant, and invigorating. But don’t be venturesome or foolhardy in strange waters. Have you any idea of taking up a course of summer study?”
“Oh, yes,” cried Ruth. “Every morning we shall have regular class work, and I am teacher. I brought several books with me, Mrs. Yates, but do you know, they all seem so far advanced for beginners. I mean, they take it for granted that the reader knows all about shell life, and sea flora, and they talk about it all so scientifically, arranging them in groups, and using the Latin names. I wish I could find a book telling the intimate family side of beach life. I’d like to be on real friendly terms with every starfish and crab I meet, not just have a bowing acquaintance, and say, ‘Ah, good morning, Monsieur Crustacean, are you a king crab, or a hermit?’”
Everyone laughed, even Marbury, who had come on deck after breakfasting below with his father and the Admiral. The girls had finished also, and Mrs. Yates suggested that Marbury show them over the yacht.
“Come back to me when you have seen everything you care to,” she told them before they left her, “and I will show you my sea-going library and my collection of ocean treasures. I started them both years ago, when Marbury was a baby, and we took our first ocean voyage. It may help you in forming collections of your own, and in trying to classify them.”
Marbury and Polly led the way over the yacht. It was as large as the revenue cutter they met coming up the bay, and quite as smart in its white and gold hull, and clean-cut smoke-stack and rigging, outlined against the cloudless sky. The forward cabin was the Senator’s special domain. Walls, lockers, and chairs all were covered with buff leather, and it was fitted with a broad center table, and desk, with wall brackets supporting cabinets containing all manner of ocean curios. The dining-room was next to it, although there was a smaller one below used for breakfast by the Senator. The main cabin was a delight to the girls. Ten staterooms opened off it, and they were not like the little, narrow “cubby-holes” generally found on steamers. Daintily furnished little rooms, with lounging chairs and couches of willow, covered with apple green chintz sprayed with pink blossoms. Curtains of the same were looped back from the white berths. Four of these rooms were given up to the girls, and they “paired off” accordingly. Polly and Crullers took one, Sue and Ted another, Isabel and Ruth a third, and Kate was all alone in the fourth, as befitted the chaperon of the party.
“Polly,” asked Mrs. Yates, after dinner that evening, “didn’t I notice a mandolin with your luggage?”
“Yes’m,” answered Polly, who in spite of her “nearly fifteen” years, still clung to the old-fashioned mode of speaking to a person older than herself. “We girls have a glee club of our own. Sue, and Ted, and Ruth, and myself. Ruth plays the guitar, and the rest of us mandolins. I thought it would be fun to take them along and play nights when we felt lonely.”
“I hope you will feel lonely to-morrow night then,” Mrs. Yates replied, smiling. “I won’t ask you to play to-night, for you must be tired, but to-morrow evening we will have a concert. I dearly love the sound of music on the water, and so does the Senator. We have a piano on board, you know, and Marbury has his banjo, although I tell him it always makes me think of the old riddle ‘what makes more noise than a pig going under a gate?’ You know the answer.”