"There she is now," said Eunice, as they came around the rocks. Cricket lay in her favourite attitude, full length on the sand, in which her elbows were buried, with a book under her nose. She sat up as the girls came nearer.
"I have an idea," she announced, beamingly.
"_Very_ hot weather for ideas!" said Eunice, fanning herself with her broad-brimmed hat.
"Eunice, you're dreadfully brilliant, aren't you? Anyway, I _have_ an idea, and I just got it from 'Little Women.'"
Edna threw herself on the sand. "Don't let's do it, if we have to _do_ anything," she said, fanning likewise.
"Now, you're brilliant. But you're a lazybones, you know. Tell us your idea, Cricket."
"You know how Jo and the rest had a club and published a paper? Now, then, let _us_ have a club and publish a paper ourselves. It would be lots of fun."
Eunice and Edna looked rather startled at Cricket's ambition.
"Who would write the pieces for it?" demanded Edna, instantly.
"_We_ would, of course," answered Cricket, superbly. "I'd love to do it."
"Write stories, and poems, and everything," urged Edna, aghast.
"Of course," repeated Cricket, undauntedly. "It's as easy as rolling off a log. That isn't slang, Eunice, and you needn't look at me. Rolling off a log is really very easy indeed." For Eunice, though her own language was not always above reproach, was very apt to play censor to her younger sister. "We'd just make them up ourselves."
"Make them _up_!" Unimaginative Edna opened her mouth and eyes wider. "I couldn't, to save my life!"
"Oh, you _could_. I've made up billions of stories," answered Cricket, hugging her knees, and talking earnestly.
"But how?" persisted Edna. "Oh, I couldn't! I wouldn't try!"
"I don't know exactly _how_," returned Cricket, considering. "Just make them up, that's all. Things come into your head all by themselves, somehow."
"It _would_ be fun, Cricket," put in Eunice, who had been thinking over the project. "We could print the paper all out on foolscap."
"We could if we wanted to. I thought we might take turns being editor, and printing everything out like a real paper. We might have one every week, and get subscribers," added Cricket, ambitiously.
"Subscribers!" groaned Edna, "and print a copy out for each one? Not if I know myself. It's too warm weather."