"There wasn't time to go back, because we didn't have to wait for Ruth. I don't believe his hour is up yet."
"No," said Julia, looking at a dainty little gold watch: "it isn't quite a quarter-past nine; it lacks ten minutes."
Ruth felt so much awed at first, by being in such fine company, that she said very little, scarcely more than answering the questions addressed to her. But Sue and Johnny paid so much attention to her, that she soon felt more at her ease; although she was quite shy of Julia, whose manner was not quite as cordial and unconstrained as that of her companions. The truth was, Julia was considerably puzzled at the attention which Johnny and Sue paid to the lighthouse keeper's niece, and this not the less from her mother having remarked, when she asked leave to go with them on the errand, "What can Mrs. Le Bras be thinking of, to want to invite that poor country girl to spend the day with her children? But since she has, and the Le Bras are such fine people, I suppose you can go, though I do think it is queer of her."
When they reached the wharf on the way back, the boys had disappeared from the pier. The pavilion, however, was quite filled with children and their nurses, and groups of boys and girls were to be seen here and there along the shore.
"I don't see Jack anywhere," remarked Sue.
"Like enough, he is one of those boys way down there on the point," said Johnny. "It's almost bathing-time now: I should like to see all the folks in bathing. We might come down about eleven."
"Yes, let's!" replied Julia: "it's great fun. Let's come down in our bathing-suits, and go in too: it's ever so much more fun where there are a lot."
"We haven't any bathing-suits yet," said Sue: "mother's going into town in a day or two to get us some, and then we can have great times. You must come over and bathe with us, Ruth. Have you a bathing-suit?"
"No; but I sometimes put on an old dress, and go a little way into the surf with my uncle."
"I should think you would be afraid," said Johnny, "on account of the undertow."