Sunny Boy crawled carefully through the doorway of the fort
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Sunny was curious to know what Queen had, and he attempted to back out hastily to see. He forgot that the doorway wasn’t very high, and when he stood up, bump! went his yellow head, and down about him tumbled the sand fort.
“Now you’ve done it!” scolded Stephen, as Sunny Boy’s feet waved wildly in the air. “Hurry up and dig, Ralph, he’ll choke!”
Ralph and Ellen dug frantically with clam shells and spades, but they had dug a deeper hole than they knew, and Sunny Boy was really buried under a heavy load of sand.
“Take the pail,” ordered Stephen, who was older than Ralph or Ellen, and able to realize that Sunny Boy might be in danger. “Ellen, you go and get—” Stephen shaded his eyes with his hand and looked up the beach. “You go and get the life-saver’s rake,” he told her.
Every morning, when the life-savers cleaned up the beach, they used long-handled wooden rakes. Usually they put these away in lockers under the pier, but Stephen’s quick eyes had seen a rake left out to-day and thrust carelessly under the piling. The two life-savers were far out beyond the breakers now, in a rowboat, watching the bathers.
“I got it!” Ellen came racing back with the rake. “Let me rake Sunny out, Stephen.”
“You’re too little. Let go,” said Stephen. He began to claw at the sand fort vigorously.
“Here come Mother and Mrs. Horton,” announced Ellen, just as Stephen and Ralph together succeeded in uncovering Sunny Boy.