Tormenting the pets that other guests had brought to the sh.o.r.e, hiding the embroidery frames that any lady might chance to leave lying on a chair, throwing hats or wraps over the piazza railing to drop at the foot of the cliff, all these things Mrs. Harcourt thought extremely amusing.
A pair of wet shoes would, of course, be very funny. Gwen was sure of that.
"Where"s that new girl?" she asked when they paused to rest.
"She"s gone out fishing with her brother," Rose replied, "and they intend to be out all day."
"Oh, well, I only asked for fun," Gwen said quickly. "She"s pleasant, and I like her, but she can"t keep still a minute, and that makes me tired."
"Why, Gwen Harcourt, neither do you," said Rose, laughing.
"Me?" said Gwen. "Well, who wants to keep still? I didn"t say I wanted to. I said it made me tired to watch her, because she,--because _she_ doesn"t keep still. That"s different!"
A shout made them turn to look down the beach.
A boy, using his hands as a speaking tube, stood looking toward them, and calling loudly, "Gwen! Gwen!"
"Oh, that"s Max Deland," said Gwen. "I"ll go and see why he"s calling me."
Without saying "Good-bye," she turned, and raced down the beach, and Polly and Rose and Sprite stood watching her flying figure.
On, on she ran until at last, they saw that she had reached the boy who had shouted to her.
Then Princess Polly spoke:
"I wonder why he didn"t run to meet her," she said, "instead of standing stock still and waiting "till she"d run every step of the way?"
"I don"t wonder," Sprite said, "because I"ve seen him do that so many times, and he tells her to "do this," and "do that," and "come here,"
and "go there," and she does just as he says every time."
"That"s queer," Rose said, "because she never lets us tell her even how to play a new game. The minute we start to tell her how it is played, she says: "Oh, I know all about it," so of course we stop, and it is Gwen who is always saying, "Come and do this," and "You must do it," till we get tired of being "bossed," and never doing as we wish.
She didn"t do that way to-day. She danced with us, and never once told us how to do it."
"Why, Polly!" cried Sprite, "she has always known that you were trained for dancing, and that you know the prettiest dances."
The three little friends still stood watching Gwen and Max.
They seemed to be discussing something upon which they could not agree, for as they watched, Max violently pointed toward some distant point on the sh.o.r.e, and stamped his foot, and each time Gwen would shake her curly head.
The boy seemed determined, and the girl obstinate.
"I wonder what he is telling her to do?" said Sprite, to which Polly replied:
"I don"t. I wonder why she doesn"t do it?"
"Yesterday he dared her to go out on an old plank, and she did it and got a ducking," said Sprite. "P"r"aps it"s something like that."
The two figures still stood out clearly, the boy evidently insisting, and the girl still shaking her head as if unwilling to do as he wished.
Some bathers came running down to the water, their gay colored caps covering their hair, their sandals tied with ribbons.
Polly, Rose, and Sprite turned to see them take the first dip, and for a few moments watched them romping in the surf.
When they turned Max and Gwen had disappeared.
"I do wonder what they were planning to do?" said Polly, "and why Gwen seemed unwilling to do it, whatever it was."
"So do I," said Rose, "because Max always wants to do the wildest things," to which Sprite added; "And you can"t often find anything wilder than Gwen would enjoy."
It happened that Max and Gwen had disappeared behind a rough shanty that laborers were using for a toolhouse.
"Now don"t be a fraidie-cat!" Max was saying. "What makes you act so?
I called you a "brick" the other day because I said you dared to do things that any girl but you wouldn"t dare to do. Now here you are, acting just the way other girls act. "Fore I"d be "fraid to sail in a tub!" He hoped to make her do it.
"Well, if you"re not afraid to, why don"t you do it, instead of asking me to do it?" snapped Gwen.
"Oh, so I can tell the other boys how brave you are," replied Max.
"They wouldn"t think anything of me a doing it," he continued, quite regardless of his grammar, "because I"m a boy, and I"m s"posed to be brave, anyway, but you"re a girl, and that"s different.
"Come! Get in! I"ll shove it!"
Gwen paused for a moment, then:
"Give me your hand!" she said.
She was afraid, but her silly vanity prompted her to do it. She knew that neither of her playmates would dare, and Max had promised to tell the other boys of the brave feat.
Max took her hand, and she sprang into the tub, crouching on the bottom, as he shoved it off into water a bit deeper than that in which they had been standing.
The tub was roughly made and anything but clean. The workmen had used it for holding cement, but had emptied it, and left it on the beach where Max had found it.
He was very fond of coaxing others to do things that he himself would never have done. Now, safe on dry land, he stood cheering Gwen for her bravery.
"Well, come and wade out here and get me back," she cried. "I"ve proved that I dared to do it, and that"s enough!"
"Wait till I get the fellows to come and see you out there in the tub.
They might not believe me if I just told them!" shouted Max, and he raced off at top speed, paying no heed to Gwen"s shrieks. No one could have guessed if Max heard her and yet kept on running, or whether the sound of his own footfalls drowned her cries.
CHAPTER IV
WHAT MAX DID
Max ran up the beach at top speed, intent upon finding his "chum," and telling him that Gwen was actually in the tub, and then, daring him to race back and see her floating about in the shallow water.