Chapter II At the Shore
Underneath the washing waves
The requiem of the sea,
For those whose hopes are buried there,
Is tolling ceaselessly.
It was interesting to go to sleep in a Pullman car, and to wake up in a dainty room hung with rosebud chintz draperies, and with an altogether delightful air of coziness about it.
But there was something outside their room that, like a magnet, drew them out of bed. They climbed on chairs, and gazed eagerly out of the windows.
The house they were in, was on a hill. Pine trees grew near, and there below them and very near, was the great silvery blue sea, with the sunshine flashing on its tossing waves? The children gasped with delight.
“It’s another door to Paradise,” said Ethelwyn.
“The gold place that shows where the sun sets is another one,” said Elizabeth. Then they heard their mother, who had come in quietly, and in a moment was cuddling them up in her arms.
“We’ve lost a lot of time, I’m afraid,” said Ethelwyn after they had given her a bear hug and a kiss.
“That ocean is the prettiest thing, mother. P’raps that’s the way to Paradise where father and grandfather and brother have gone.”
“Yes,” said their mother, helping them into their clothes. “It is one of the ways.”
“Tell us about this place, please,” begged Ethelwyn, “and how we happened to come to such a de-lic-ious place. Will you have to work so hard, motherdy, here? And will the little lines come between your eyes?” Whereupon Elizabeth at once abandoned to their fate, her harness garters with their many buckles, and climbed up to see. Yes, the lines had gone, and she kissed the place to make sure before she climbed down again.
“Hoty potys is the twissedest things,” she remarked, worse tangled than ever.
“Hose supporters, dear child,” corrected Ethelwyn with the exasperating air that always roused Beth’s wrath.
“This cottage,” mother hastened to say, while she untangled the buckles with one hand and buttoned Ethelwyn’s waist with the other, “belongs to Mrs. Stevens and her daughter, Dorothy. I have known them for years. Recently they wrote asking me to bring you children and come to them for the summer; they, too, were lonely, and they knew that I needed rest, quiet, and time to plan for the future. There are few people living here but fisher folk—”
“Christ’s people?”
“Yes, like them in trade, at least. They are poor and need help—”
“Are we rich people now, and can we buy things for them?”
“Your grandfather left you a great deal of money, children, and you must learn to use it generously. It was his wish, and mine, that you should begin at once to think about such things before you learn to love money for its own sake, and what it will buy.”
“O, we don’t care at all, do we, sister?” said Beth, stretching up on tiptoe to get her “bawheady” from the bureau. “We’d just as lief give it away as not, ’cause we’ve always you, mother dear.”
“Is the money more than grandmother’s gold dollar?” asked Ethelwyn.
“Much more.”
“O, then we’ll have fun spending it for folks; I’d like to. But, oh, I’m hungrier than I ever was before.”
“Me, too,” said Beth. “I feel a great big appeltite inside me.”
They decided at once that the dining-room also was charming, with its cheery open fire of snapping pine knots, for the air outside was chilly. Then, too, there was a parrot on a pole, who greeted them with, “Well, well, well, what’s all this? Did you ever?”
Miss Dorothy Stevens had the kind of face that children take to at once. There never could be any question about Aunty Stevens, who laughed every time they said anything, and who on top of their excellent breakfast, brought them in some most delicious cookies—just the kind you would know she could make, sugary and melty, entirely perfect, in fact,—to take down on the beach for luncheon.
After breakfast was over they at once started for the beach. Sierra Nevada, their colored nurse, following them with small buckets, shovels, wraps, and cushions.
“Mother, this is the nicest place, and I love the Stevenses; but why are they sad around the eyes, and dressed in black, like you? Has their father gone to Paradise too?” asked Ethelwyn, as they walked along.
“Yes, dear. Besides, the young captain whom Dorothy was going to marry went away last year and, his ship was wrecked and he has never been heard from. So they fear he was drowned.”
“O, mother, can this pretty sea do that? What was it they were saying about a tide?”
Their mother tried to explain all she knew about the tides, and when she had finished, Ethelwyn said:
“I think it would be easier to remember to call it tied, and then untied.”