“It was worth getting into one’s bathing suit with the daylight and sliding cat-footed out of the cottage, just to watch the sun come up over the water,” declared Emmy warmly. “I was just thinking while lying here in the sand what a different sort of person I’d grown to be. Don’t you remember last year, when first I came to Wanderer’s Roost, I wasn’t a bit interested in Nature. It was going camping that one week that woke me up to the glory of the outdoors. Now I wonder how I could ever have allowed myself to miss so much for so long.”
“I think I’ve always been a Nature lover,” mused Ruth. “When I was a tiny girl I dearly loved to tear through the fields and tramp about in the woods. Once when I was about ten years old, I packed my best doll, six ginger cookies and half a loaf of bread in my doll carriage and went off to the woods all by myself on a picnic. Of course, I didn’t ask permission. It was to be a great adventure, and I felt quite equal to it. I stayed in the woods all day and had a beautiful time. I played Babes in the Wood and covered my doll with leaves, and impersonated Robinson Crusoe, using the same good old doll for Friday.
“You can imagine what was happening at home while I was enjoying myself! By the middle of the afternoon, half of Burton was out looking for me. About five o’clock I began to get pretty hungry. I had eaten the ginger cookies, but bread without butter didn’t look very good to me, so I had broken it up and scattered it broadcast for the birds. I was serenely trundling my doll carriage along the road home when I ran straight into a search party headed by my father. I did a great deal of explaining, but it wasn’t very satisfactory to either Father or Mother. My great adventure ended in a scolding from both, and I wasn’t allowed to go out of the yard for a whole week afterward. That almost broke my heart, but it cured me of running away.” Ruth’s merry laugh rang out as she dwelt upon the tragic ending of her great adventure.
Emmy smiled her amusement at the tale. Her lovely face sobered a trifle as she said: “I never had a real childhood like yours. Mine was lived among grown-ups in fashionable hotels all over the civilized world. Not that Father and Mother neglected me. I’ve always been their chief consideration. But we are unfortunate enough to belong to that portion of society known as the ‘idle rich.’ Add to that, my father’s restless temperament, and you can understand why we never take root in any particular bit of soil. Until I came to Hillside, Paris was more like home to me than any other place I ever lived in. We’ve spent several winters there. I always had a governess except the one year I went to boarding school near Paris.”
“It’s funny, but do you know I’ve never asked how you happened to pick out Miss Belaire’s Academy,” commented Ruth, her bright eyes sending out signals of belated curiosity.
“Oh, Mother and I were at Bar Harbor the summer before I came to Hillside, and while we were there, we met a perfectly delightful woman, an intimate friend of Miss Belaire. She recommended the academy at Hillside for me. Just at that time, Mother was quite in favor of letting me go to some good school in America. So she wrote to Miss Belaire, and you know the rest. It was a lucky day for me when I landed at Hillside.”
“And for me,” echoed Ruth fervently. “It’s strange how things happen, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I—” Emma sat up suddenly, her lovely face breaking into smiles. “Discovered!” she exclaimed dramatically.
From the top of the steep bank, that rose to a height of perhaps twenty-five feet behind the narrow strip of white beach, a shrill halloo had split the enchanted silence. On the heights above, three figures in bathing suits were prancing about, accompanying their gyrations with triumphant shouts. Having succeeded in attracting the attention of the recumbent pair on the sand, they charged recklessly down the narrow path to the beach and landed tumultuously beside their quarry.
“Stole a march on us, didn’t you?” cried Jane Pellew, playfully shaking Ruth by the shoulders. “Shall we duck them, girls?”