The girls from the old Corner House might have been a little homesick had there not been so much to take up their attention each hour at Pleasant Cove.
They brought Rosa to the little old woman who lived in a shoe, and the moment Mrs. Bobster saw how weak and white she was her sympathy went out to her.
"Tut, tut, tut!" she said, clucking almost as loudly as Agamemnon himself. "We'll soon fix you up, my dear. If you stay long enough here at the beach, you'll be as brown and strong as these other gals."
Rosa put her arm about Ruth's neck when the Corner House girls were about to leave.
"This is a heavenly place, Ruth Kenway, and you are an angel for bringing me down heah. I don't know what greater thing anybody could do fo' me--and you aren't even kin!"
"Don't bother, Rosa. I haven't done much----"
"There's nothing in the world--but one thing--that could make me happier."
Ruth looked at her curiously, and Rosa added:
"To find June. I hope to find her some day--yes, I do."
"And suppose I should help you do _that_?" laughed the oldest Corner House girl.
TWO GIRLS IN A BOAT--TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG!
"Oh, Dot! do come here. Did you ever see such a funny thing in all your life?"
Tess Kenway was just as earnest as though the discovery she had made was really of great moment. The two bare-legged girls were on the sands below the tent colony of Willowbend, and the tide was out.
The receding waves had just left this wet flat bare. Here and there the sand still dimpled to the heave of the tide, and little rivers of water ran into the hollows and out again.
"What is the matter, Tess?" asked Dot, wonderingly.
Tess pointed down at her feet--where the drab, wet sand showed lighter-colored under the pressure of her weight.
There was a tiny round hole in the sand--just like an ant hole, only there was no "hill" thrown up about it. As Tess tip-tilted on her toes to bring more pressure to bear near the orifice in the sand, a little fountain of water spurted into the air--shot as though from a fairy gun buried in the sand.
"Goodness!" gasped Dot again. "What _is_ that?"
"That's what I say," responded Tess. "Did you ever see the like?"
"Oh! here's another," cried Dorothy, who chanced to step near a similar vent. "See it squirt, Tess! See it squirt!"