"She certainly looks very stunning under that red parasol, posing up there on the beach," said Dum, riding a wave and landing almost on top of me. "I can't abide her but I must confess she is very paintable, especially the red parasol. I'll never cease to regret that I did not hook my foot in the handle and drag it overboard with me when I dived off the launch. I thought about it while I was slipping off my shoes and it would have been as easy as dirt to make out it was an accident; but it would have been too Mabelesque an act and I could not quite make up my mind to do it."
"I should say not, but if it could have happened and been a real accident it would certainly have been fun," I exclaimed. "I can see you leaping into the air with your toe hitched to the parasol like a kind of a parachute. Who are her friends?"
"Search me! but I notice she does not see fit to introduce them. I wonder whether she is ashamed of them or ashamed of us."
"'Mother dear, may I go swim?'
'Yes, my darling daughter,
Hang your clothes on a hickory limb
But don't go near the water,'"
sang Mary, throwing her voice so it seemed to come from behind Mabel. Then we dived under the water and our giggles came up in the form of my specialty, bubbles. Mabel never did wet her suit, however.
When we had had all the swim we wanted, we raced back to the bath houses and found the humorous maid had our clothes all nicely dried. The effect was rather rough-dried, but we were not in a position to be choosy.
"Well, here you is back agin! I can't sees dat you look no cleaner dan you did befo'. I low all dat soakin' will draw de suption outn yo' bones an' dey ain't nuf strength lef' in you to make a pot er soup."
And the truth was, I did feel a little feeble from the two swims and realized that I was only fit for soupe maigre or some very weak broth. Food was what I needed; and as soon as we got into our rumpled clothes, dinner was ready. What a dinner it was! Clam chowder first, with everything in it that the proprietor could find, and seasoned to a king's taste; then soft shell crabs with tartar sauce; then baked blue-fish with roasted corn and creamed potatoes; then tomato salad; then any kind of pie your fancy dictated.
"All I ask of you is not to eat ice cream," begged Zebedee; "it is fatal along with crabs." And so we refrained, although it did seem to me with all the layers of food between the crabs and dessert, it would have been safe.
Dinner over, we determined to explore the Cape. It was a tremendously interesting spot. In the first place it was at Cape Henry that the English first disembarked in 1607. A stone tablet now supplants the old wooden cross raised by the first settlers to mark the spot where the adventurers landed on American soil. It is a bleak place with little vegetation of any sort, nothing but the beach grass and a few stunted oaks that look as though they had bowed their heads to invincible storms from the moment that their little lives had burst from the acorns.