"No," said Hattie May, "I must admit I've never had that pleasure. None of my family are farmers!"
This did not seem to be a very auspicious beginning for our picnic. Eve threw herself into the breach. "Do let's get into the water," she urged, "before it gets any later."
Michael, as one might have guessed, proved to be by far the best swimmer of us all, though Eve was a good second. Hattie May's efforts were punctuated by blood curdling screams and calls for somebody to "save her"; but as no one paid the slightest attention, she soon gave up and returned to land. Hamish, too, after paddling about rather blindly without his spectacles, sat down on the sand where, replacing his glasses on his dripping countenance, he began making entries in a notebook.
"What is it, Hamish?" I inquired. "Your diary or memoirs or something?"
He shook his head absently. "No, just bringin' my notes on the Craven case up to date."
I raised myself on my elbow and looked at him. Was he just a rather overgrown little boy playing at being detective? Or had he really found out something of importance? Suddenly he fixed me with his thick lenses. "I know what you think," he said astutely. "You think I'm one of those playboy detecitifs like in the books!"
"Oh, no, indeed," I assured him hastily. "Of course I don't think anything of the kind!"
"Yes, you do," he stated. "But I'm not, I'm different. I figure things out. I'm smart. I got ideas."
"I'm sure you have," I murmured, and waited for what I hoped was coming. But Hamish just went on writing. At any rate he was keeping his own counsel in the approved manner of the perfect sleuth.
The day was perfection and, as I lay there on the warm sand and gazed out over the blue bay with its flecks of white where it met the sea, the question of why someone had written something in an old letter grew suddenly unimportant in the face of that bigger wonder of earth and sea and sky. Then I fell to remembering another blue bay on the other side of the world across which I had sailed away from Mother and Dad nearly a year ago.
"Sandy's being homesick!" Eve's mellow voice broke into my thoughts.
I sat up. "No such thing!" I declared stoutly. "I was just thinking that a blue emerald couldn't hold a candle to the color of that water out there!"