"Hire a boat? Why, we've got two boats—a row-boat and a sail-boat—of our own!"
"I remember, now, hearing you say so; but as I saw no boat around here, I had forgotten about it. Where are the boats kept?"
"They are down at the pier usually, when they are in use. I'll go and ask Oliver about them."
Oliver soon came in with Felix, and stated that the boats were at the pier which they had noticed just this side of the row of cottages; they had been in the keeping of a man in the village who owned a boat-house, and had not been taken out until Oliver heard Mr. Le Bras was coming; but, the day before, he had told the man to bring them to the pier, and he presumed they would be found there, although he had forgotten to notice as they came past. Felix's father was intending to have a little wharf built out in front of the cottage, but he had not been able to attend to it yet.
"But the beach comes to an end for a while, a little above here," continued Oliver; "and you can run a boat up there, and land by the rocks, when you don't want to go down as far as the pier; but the pier is a handier place to get out and in, if you've got ladies along."
Sue was very anxious then to see the pony and dog-cart which Felix said she could use. Oliver told her he would harness the pony by and by, so that she could drive along the beach.
"But it won't be half so nice to go alone, and the boys don't care any thing about riding in a dog-cart."
"I shouldn't at all wonder," said Mary, who was standing in the kitchen-door, "if Miss Julia, the young lady who lives in the next cottage, would like to ride with you: she has asked to borrow the dog-cart several times herself, when she's had young friends here, and she seems to like it very much. Mr. Le Bras told her she could take it any time she wanted it."
"I wish some one would ask her," said Sue. "Won't you, Felix?"
"Yes: if you and Johnny will come and sit in the front piazza, I'll go and ask her to come over here and get acquainted."