“She sleeps most anywhere,” said Ellen, who was spending her third summer in Nestle Cove and really knew Queen very well indeed. “Sometimes she sleeps on our front porch. And my mother always feeds her if she acts hungry. All the people in the cottages know Queen.”
“Here’s a shell for you, Sunny,” announced Ralph, who had been running up the beach looking for one. “Let’s start the fort right here in this corner. You mark how it goes, Stephen.”
Stephen knew all about forts. He had a big brother who was an officer in the regular army, and he lived in forts, just as more ordinary people live in houses.
“First you have a wall,” said Stephen. “You can begin on that, Ellen. Oh, ’way off! There, that’s about right. And Sunny Boy and Ralph and me will make a great big fort, big enough to get into.”
To measure the height of their fort, they used one of the old pilings left from the pier that had burned and had never been rebuilt, and then they began to heap up the sand. If Stephen had only known it, what they were building looked far more like an Eskimo’s hut than it did a fort, but that didn’t matter as long as the builders were satisfied.
“Now what do you think of that?” Stephen stood off to admire their work. “I wish Aunt Hallie would hurry up and come and see it.”
“Isn’t the wall nice?” asked Ellen, who had been working every minute to finish her part of the task. “It’s just as smooth! Feel, Stephen.”
“Yes, that’s great,” approved Stephen. “Want to see how it looks inside, Sunny? Stoop down, and don’t hit your head anywhere, or you’ll knock it down.”
Sunny Boy crawled carefully through the doorway of the fort. It was hollowed out inside to make a little room. He was half way in and half way out when he heard Ellen exclaim: “Look what Queen has in her mouth! Do you suppose she got it out of the water?”
