“Yes, you are, too,” Ruth answered, in her placid way. “But I like you for it. You’re like a sea anemone. They can change their colors, you know, to match their surroundings. And I think it’s a good plan, the same as the chameleon. Somebody, Emerson or Thoreau, I forget which, says we should all keep our natures in tune with the harmony of the spheres. What does that mean but adapting yourself to your immediate environment—”
“Cut out the big words, Grandma,” Polly said, briefly. “It makes me think of Honoria, and I’ll get homesick if you don’t stop.”
“Well, you know what I mean, Polly, don’t you? It’s why you’re always a favorite with us, even your very first year you could sit down at Calvert Hall and listen sympathetically to Miss Calvert’s detailed description of how much she had suffered from neuralgia; then you’d go right down to the kitchen and cheer up poor Annie May and tell her the sun was surely coming out right away, and her ‘rheumatuz’ would be better. Then upstairs you’d fly, and help Crullers with her Algebra, Sue with her English Literature, and me with my Civics, and still have time to get your own work done before class-time. And you never grumbled one bit.”
“No, but I lose my temper all at once,” said Polly dolefully, as she picked up a starfish out of a tiny pool left by the tide and straightened out its arms. “Never mind me now, though. Let’s not talk psychics. Look at this fellow, Ruth. Wonder if Sue would want to tame him to walk a tight-rope.”
Polly lay flat down in the sand, despite her fourteen years, and examined the starfish at close range, in true youngster fashion, while Ruth poked it over gently with a long splinter of wood.
“They say if one of its arms breaks off, another will grow in its place,” said Ruth.
“Will it? I wish ours would. Think how nice it would be for all the cripples if their arms and legs would only sprout again. Can starfish see, Ruth?”
“Indeed they can. See that tiny red speck at the end of each arm? That’s the eye. Its mouth is underneath, and look at all the feet on the under side of the rays, Polly. They say a starfish is like a sieve, all tiny holes that the water runs through.”
“Well, this one is going to be dried, neatly dried,” said Polly. “It’s a shame to do it, but in the interests of science he must be dried.”
“Don’t show it to Sue, then,” Ruth suggested. “She’ll want to tame it, surely. She wants to tame everything we find and make a pet of it. Tom brought her two turtles this morning, besides a tin box half full of periwinkles. She’s trying to train them to come out of their shells when she whistles to them; think of it, Polly.”