They made a lovely picture as they sat there with the sunlight pouring down upon them. Bet's golden hair was rumpled by the wind—but then Bet's hair was mostly rumpled for one reason or another. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright—just because she was happy and enjoyed life.
Shirley's head was bent over her camera. She was the serious one of the group. Shirley could enter into the good times as well as the others, but her smile came less quickly. And there were days, like the present, when her face would wrinkle with a frown as she tried to work out some problem in photography. Picture-taking was her hobby, and when the other girls skipped and danced about, Shirley would often trudge along burdened with a camera and tripod.
Joy was all sunshine. It was just as impossible for her to keep still as it would be for a dancing sunbeam to become motionless. Now, as she watched the gull, she suddenly jumped to her feet, and poising on tiptoe, swayed her slender body in rhythm with the flight of the gull.
Abruptly, a rustling sound, the breaking of a twig, disturbed the quiet and Bet sat erect with a gasp of surprise. She caught Joy by the arm. "S-sh! Keep quiet!"
For a tall girl, slightly older than the three, had appeared on top of the stone wall that enclosed the estate and with a quick jump had straddled it. Whipping off her cap she twirled it around her head. "Whoopee!" she shouted, and her curly black locks bobbed in the breeze. Then beating her cap against the wall at her side she cried: "Go it Powder! Let's race! Faster! Faster! Good old pony!"
Bet and her friends might have laughed at this strange sight if the play had continued a moment longer, but in the next second the girl had thrown herself flat on the wall and had burst into tears.
Bet reached her first, "What's the matter, dear?" she called. "Are you hurt? Let us help you!"
But the stranger had disappeared on the other side of the wall, or partly disappeared, for her heavy skirt had caught on a barbed wire that ran along the fence and held her suspended, head down.
With a spring Bet was on the wall. Letting herself drop to the other side, she caught the stranger's head in her arms and eased the fall, as the dress ripped and gave way.
The young girl's tears had vanished by the time she was once more in a standing position. Her face was red with embarrassment.