“Just as you like. If you and Nellie want to go bathing, then so do we.”
“I’d rather not,” returned Mabel. “I’d rather just poke around down on the beach and in the boat house. I think it would be more fun to get up early to-morrow morning and go bathing.”
“Those are golden words, my child,” grinned Patsy. “I was of the same mind, but too polite to say so. We can prowl around the boat house this afternoon and find out what we need to take down there in the way of bathing comforts. Dad says we’ll have to add the final touches ourselves. We’ll be up in a minute, Mabsie.”
“All right.”
Mabel promptly disappeared from the balcony. Patsy and Bee rose. Leaving the patio they went upstairs to their room.
A few minutes later the Wayfarers and Mr. Carroll were swinging down the oleander drive toward the highway. Miss Martha had declined to join the expedition. Following the highway north for about an eighth of a mile, they turned at last into a narrow white road hedged in by vermilion hibiscus growing rank and wild for lack of care. The road was shaded for some distance by double rows of palms, which had been planted on each side. Presently it entered the stretch of jungle lying above the beach and continued almost straight ahead through the bit of wilderness.
“Some of the Feredas must have liked to go bathing or they never would have had this dandy road cut through to the beach,” was Beatrice’s opinion, as the party came at last to the end of the tropical road and out onto the warm white sands.
The beach itself curved inward like a new moon to meet the jungle which surrounded it on three sides. At the left, near the water’s edge, stood the once dilapidated boat house. It now looked very trim in its new coat of white paint.
The jungle road ended almost at the middle of the new moon. Emerging from it and walking a few steps across the sands, the Wayfarers paused, by common consent, to gaze admiringly out on the glorious expanse of dazzlingly blue sea that lay only the breadth of the curving beach beyond them.