“But what are we doing out here?”
“I can’t guess. There is a wonderful beach everywhere and cottages here and there.”
“But it’s too late for summer cottages. They must all be closed.”
“Yes, of course they must.”
Again they trudged on in silence. Now they left the road to strike away across the soft, yielding surface of the sand. They sank in to their ankles. Some of the sand got into their shoes and hurt their feet, but still they trudged on.
The rush of waters on the shore grew louder.
“I love it,” Florence whispered. “I like sleeping where I can hear the rush of water. I’ve slept beside the Arctic Ocean, the Behring Sea and the Pacific. I’ve slept by the shore of this old lake. Once in the Rocky Mountains I climbed to the timber-line and there slept for five nights in a tent where all night long you could hear the rush of icy water over rocks which were more like a stony stairway than the bed of a stream. It was grand.
“When I am sleeping where I can hear the rush of water I sometimes half awaken at night and imagine I am once more on the shore of the Arctic or in a tent at the timber-line of the Rockies.”
While she was whispering this they felt the sand suddenly harden beneath their feet and knew that they had reached the beach.
“You know,” the child whispered suddenly and mysteriously back at them, “I don’t like beaches at night. I lived by one when I was a very little girl. There was a very, very old woman lived there too. She told me many terrible stories of the sea. And do you know, once she told me something that has made me afraid to be by the shore at night. It makes it spooky.”