Bathing suits were produced and while our chaperone slumbered and slept, we got into them and then into the water. Such water! It was clear and soft, so much more so than the water of the big river. The bottom was clean sand with no disturbing rocks and snags. The trees shaded the place chosen for our swim where the sloping beach made it safe for the timid close to shore, but ten yards of perseverance plunged the bold swimmer into really deep water.
The shouts of joy would have waked the dead had there been any on the island, but nothing waked the sleeping Aunt Milly. She had burrowed down in the unresisting sand almost as deep as some meteoric stone might have done. There she lay, having the rest that she deserved after the "mos' a hun'erd years er cookin'" that she declared she had served at Maxton.
"This is my island!" cried Dum, swimming over to a beautiful spot about twenty yards from camp. She clambered out on the strip of sand and stood with arms outstretched looking very handsome, her lithe young figure drawn up to its full height. "I am monarch of all I survey! I'm queen of this land!"
"Let me come help you rule," pleaded Billy Somers, who had followed her.
"I don't need a prime minister just now, thank you, but you might get in the waiting list."
"Thanks awfully!" and the young Kentuckian threw himself on the warm sand at her feet. What nice fellows those Kentuckians were, anyhow! They were full of life and fun, clean minded, clear thinking, well-mannered boys. Dum and Billy were friends from the moment they met and were usually the ringleaders in any larks that were started on the house-party. The strange thing about the friendship was that they looked alike, so very much alike that I believe some pioneer ancestor of Billy's must have come from the Tucker stock.
Billy's hair had a bit more red in it than Dum's, not much, just enough to make his hair in the shade about the color Dum's was in the sun. Their foreheads were identical and their chins had the same tendency to get square when an argument was under way. They really looked quite as much alike as the twins themselves did. Zebedee declared that Billy made him feel a hundred years old because he looked so like his son, if he had ever had one. Billy was about three years older than the twins, and when we consider that the twins were born when their father was only twenty, no wonder the possibility of a son at seventeen made poor Mr. Tucker blue.
"THIS IS OUR ISLAND AND WE ARE GOING TO PERMIT NO ALIENS TO LAND HERE." [Page 178].
"This is our island and we are going to permit no aliens to land here," called Dum as a challenge to all of us. "I am Queen Dum and Billy is General Billdad. We have held counsel and herewith make the proclamation that there is to be no immigration to this kingdom."