"Are these little boys your brothers, Lot—Charlotte P., I mean?" she asked.
"Oh, no!" cried Nelly. "Our bwother is lots and lots bigger than they are. That's Sinclair and Fweddy. They ain't no 'lation at all, 'cept that they live next door."
"Their mamma's a widow," interposed Charlotte P. "She plays on the piano, and a real handsome gentleman comes to see her 'most every day. That's what being a widow means."
"Look here what I've found!" shouted Sinclair, who had gone farther down the beach. "I guess it's a shrimp. And if I had a match I'd make a fire and cook it, for I read in a book once that shrimps are delicious."
"Let me see him! Let me see him!" clamored the little ones. Then, in a tone of disgust: "Oh, my! ain't he horrid-looking and little. He isn't any bigger than the head of a pin."
"That's not true," asserted Sinclair: "he's bigger than the head of my mamma's shawl-pin, and that's ever so big."
"I don't believe he's good a bit," declared Lotty.
"Then you shan't have any of him when he's cooked," said Sinclair. "I've got a jelly-fish, too. He's in a hole with a little water in it, but he can't get out. I mean to eat him, too. Are jelly-fish good?" to Eyebright.
"I don't believe they are," she replied. "I never heard of anybody's eating them."
"I like fishes," went on Sinclair. "My mamma says she guesses I've got a taste for nat-nat-ural history. When I grow up I mean to read all the books about animals."