Three Little Cousins

"Yes, and lobster salad, too."

"Are the wild roses in bloom yet, and are the wild strawberries ripe?" queried Molly.

"The strawberries are trying to get ripe, but I haven't seen a single wild rose yet. Come right in; I know by Dick's eager look that he is ready for my baked mackerel. I have Luella Barnes to help me this year," she whispered, "and she has a big white satin bow in her hair because we have a young man as guest." She laughed mirthfully and Polly thought the way her eyes squeezed up was perfectly fascinating. Her Aunt Ada had visited Colorado when Polly was a baby, but, of course, Polly did not remember it, nor would her aunt have recognized her baby niece in the little rosy-cheeked girl before her.

"This is something like our house," said Polly, looking around with a pleased expression at the unplastered room with its simple furnishings.

"Then you will feel at home," said her aunt. "Take off your hats, girlies, while I see to dinner, for you know the necessity, Molly, of looking after things yourself up this way."

Just here Luella appeared. She was a tall, angular young woman with a mass of fair hair, very blue eyes and a tiny waist. The white satin bow was conspicuous, and as she caught sight of Dick Reid she simpered and giggled in what the little girls thought a very silly way since it displayed Luella's bad teeth to which she evidently never gave the least attention. However, they all soon forgot everything but satisfying their appetites with the baked mackerel, deliciously fresh, the roasted potatoes, young peas and lobster salad.

"These taste so different from canned things," said Polly, passing up her plate for a second helping of lobster.

Luella reached out a bony arm and took the plate. "I'm glad to see you can eat hearty," she remarked. "Give her a real good help, Mr. Reid."

Molly giggled, though she knew the ways of the "hired help" her aunt employed in the summer. Aunt Ada gave her a warning look, for the natives were quick to take offense and Miss Ada had no wish to be left with no one in the kitchen. "And when is Mary coming?" she asked.

"Oh, we don't know exactly," Molly told her. "Mother will bring her up when she and papa go to Rangeley. Mother thought it would be in about a week. What will you do with three little girls to look after, Aunt Ada?"

"Oh, I expect them to look after me," returned Miss Ada.

"And if they don't do that properly, or if they get obstreperous," put in Uncle Dick, "it is the easiest thing in the world to throw them overboard. I'll do it for you, Ada; the rocks are very handy, and it will not be much of a job."

Polly made a face at him. "I know how much you'll throw us over," she said. "You'd better not try it with me, you sinful evil-doer."

"You see what is before you, Ada," said Dick. "You'll rue the day you consented to have three nieces with you for a whole summer; yet," he shook his head and said darkly, "I know what can be done if worse comes to worst."

"What then, Mr. Dicky-Picky?" said Polly.

"That's for me to know and for you to find out," he replied.

"My, ain't she sassy?" said Luella in a loud whisper to Miss Ada, "but then he ain't no more'n a boy the way he talks."

This was too much for Dick who could not keep his face straight as he rose from the table quickly. "Who's for the rocks, the cove or the woods?" he asked.

"The rocks, the rocks, first," cried both little girls.

"I want to show Polly the dear little pools where the star-fish are, and the cave under the rocks where we found the sea-urchins and where those queer bluey, diamondy shining things are," said Molly.

Polly squeezed her hand. "Oh, I'm so excited," she said. "I have been just wild to see all those things."

"You shall see them in short order," her uncle told her. "We keep our aquarium in the front garden."

"Where is the garden?" asked Polly innocently.

Her uncle laughed as he led the way over the hummocks down the rugged path to the rocks. Here they clambered over crags and barnacled boulders till they came to a quiet pool reflecting the blue of the sky. Its sides were fringed with floating sea-weeds and it was peopled by many sorts of strange creatures which thrived upon the supplies brought in by the ocean with its tides. A green crab scuttled out of sight under some pebbles; a purple star-fish crept softly from behind a bunch of waving crimson weeds; a sea-anemone opened and shut its living petals; by peering under the shelving rock one could see the dainty shell of a sea-urchin.

Polly gazed astonished at the pool's wonders. "It is like fairy-land," she whispered. "I never saw anything so beautiful. Can we come here every day and will the little pools with these queer creatures always be just this way?"

"We can always come at low tide," Molly told her.

"Then I'll always come down here at this time every day."

"But it will not be low tide always at this time," said Molly.

"Oh, won't it?" returned inland little Polly, quite taken aback. "Why won't it?"

Then her uncle told her how the coming in of the tide changes just as the rising of the moon does, and that one must know the difference in time to be sure. Then he went on to explain something about the small creatures which inhabited the pools, the barnacles which covered the rocks up to a certain point.

"Why don't the barnacles go any higher?" asked Polly. "I should think they would grow and grow just like grass does over bare places in the ground.

"They extend only to high water-mark," her uncle told her, "for you see they are fed by the ocean. If you will watch closely, you can see them open and close as the waves come and go."

"Isn't it wonderful?" said Polly in an awe-struck voice.

"I like it best when the tide is up," remarked Molly, "for I don't think all that dark sea-weed that covers the rocks is very pretty."

Polly looked down at the long ropes of seaweed which clung to the craggy places beneath them. "It makes the rocks look just like buffaloes or some strange kind of animals," she said. "I shall call that Buffalo Rock, and that other the Lion's Den, for it looks like a lion lying down."

"There is a dear place further down," said Molly. "It is sheltered from the wind and we have tea there sometimes. There is a cunning fireplace that Uncle Dick built there last year. I wonder if it is still standing. Let's go and see."

They followed the shore a little further and found a flat rock not far below the top of the bluff. The fireplace was nearly as they had left it, and only required a few stones to make it as good as new. Molly viewed it with a satisfied air as her uncle topped it with a final stone. "There," she exclaimed, "it is ready for our first afternoon tea! We'll toast marshmallows, too, as soon as we can get some at the store."

"Why can't we get them to-day?" asked Polly who did not want to put off such a pleasure.

"Because Mr. Hobbs never has any before the Fourth of July. He always gets in his good things then, but never a day sooner or later. I know him of old," said Dick.

"By that time Mary will be here," said Molly thoughtfully, "and we can have our first tea-party in her honor."

"Yes, and she can help us make our Fourth," said Uncle Dick, laughing. "She has never known our great and glorious Fourth over there in England."

"Of course not," said Polly. "I forgot she was a wicked Britisher."

"Not very wicked," said Uncle Dick.

"But we must never let her think we have any grudge against her because we were the ones that won the Revolution," said Molly. "It wouldn't be polite to pick at her because she isn't an American. Do you suppose she will be very snippy, Polly? and will be disagreeable and run down America?"

"Oh, my, I hope not; I'd hate her to be that way," returned Polly alarmed at such a prospect. "It would be dreadful for us to be quarreling all the time and of course we couldn't keep still if she runs down our country. What shall we do if she does?"

"Send her to me," said Uncle Dick.

This settled the matter and was a relief to both little girls, who considered that what Uncle Dick didn't know was not worth knowing, besides he had a smiling way of putting down persons who bragged too much, as the cousins well knew.

"I am just crazy to see her, and yet somehow I dread it," Polly told Molly.

Molly confessed to much the same feeling and declared that she would be glad when the first meeting was over and they were all acquainted. Then she undertook to show Polly more of her favorite haunts and it was suppertime before they had begun to see all they wished to.

The next week Mary arrived with Mrs. Shelton who remained but a short time before she resumed her journey. Mary was a slim, pale, plainly-dressed little girl who looked not at all as her cousins imagined. She did not seem shy but she had little to say at first, sitting by herself in a corner of the porch as soon as dinner was over and answering only such questions as were put to her.