"Well, good night to all of you. I only hope I can get undressed before I fall asleep."
It was a wondrous night, and since the girls would not let me help with the dishes, I accepted Mr. Tucker's invitation to stroll on the beach with him while he finished his cigar. How pleasant the night was after the terrible glare of the day! For the first time I began to feel that the beach was going to be what I had dreamed it to be. The sun had set but there was a soft afterglow.
"And in the Heavens that clear obscure,
So softly dark and darkly pure,
Which follows the decline of day,
As twilight melts beneath the moon away,"
quoted Mr. Tucker. "I am afraid you are pretty tired, too, Page. You do not seem to have your usual spirits. I bet a horse I know what it is! You are disappointed in Willoughby Beach."
"Oh, please don't think it, Mr. Tucker – "
"I don't think it, I just know it. You must not feel bad about it. Everybody always is disappointed in it at first, and then in a few days wonders how he could have been anything but in love with it. You question now how anyone could be contented without trees or grass, and in a week's time you wonder what is the good of trees and grass, anyhow. I know today you felt like old Regulus when his captors cut off his eyelids and exposed him to the sun. You'll get used to the sun, too, and even scorn a hat as Tweedles do."
I was really embarrassed at Mr. Tucker's divining my feelings as he did, but it was no new thing, as he often seemed to be able to guess my thoughts. I, too, often found that I had thought out something just as he was in the act of giving voice to it. I had been desperately disappointed in the beach. The great stretches of unbroken sand, the cloudless sky and a certain flatness everywhere had given me a sensation of extreme heaviness and dreariness; but now that the blessed darkness had come and I no longer had to scrooch up my eyes, I began to feel that it was not such a stale, flat, unprofitable place after all. And it was certainly very pleasant out there, pacing up and down on the sand with Mr. Tucker, who treated me just like one of his daughters in a way but at the same time gave me a feeling that he thought I was quite grown-up enough to be talked to and listened to. He had called me "Miss Page" at first, but now that he had dropped the "Miss" and I was just plain Page I seemed more of a companion to him than before.
Tweedles soon came racing out, having finished the dish washing.
"We didn't wipe 'em, but scalded 'em and let 'em dreen. Dee broke two cups – I broke a saucer!" exclaimed Dum. "It's entirely too lovely a night to waste indoors."
"So it is, but it is also a mighty good night for sleeping and I think all of us had better turn in pretty early," said Mr. Tucker.
"Oh, not yet, Zebedee!" tweedled the girls, "we are not a bit sleepy. You are always wanting people to go to bed before they are ready." And with that they flopped themselves down on the sand, Dum with her head on my knee and Dee with hers on her father's shoulder and in one minute they were fast asleep.
"Now what are we going to do with these babies, Page?"
"I hate to wake them but they will be sure to catch cold," I replied. And so wake them we had to and lead them stumbling to the cottage and up the steps to the east porch, where they were with difficulty persuaded to go through what they considered, in their sleepy state, to be the unnecessary formality of undressing.
I had been sleeping pretty well for almost sixteen years but after that first night at Willoughby Beach on a sleeping-porch, I knew that I had never really realized what sleep meant. No matter how many windows you may have open in your bedroom, it is still a room, and no matter how much you may protect a porch, it is still out-of-doors. We were in bed by nine o'clock and we were asleep almost before we were in bed, and while my sleep was perfectly dreamless I was, in a measure, conscious of a delicious well being, a sentiment de bien être. All through the night I was rocked in this feeling and I was then and there reconciled to the beach, flatness, glare and all. A place that had such sleep-giving powers was one to be loved and not scorned, and forthwith I began to love it.
CHAPTER IV
BUBBLES
The sun finds an east porch very early in the morning and five o'clock was late enough to sleep, anyhow, when one has gone to bed at nine. Tweedles and I had many duties to perform and we were glad enough to be up and doing.
"Me for a dip in the briny, before I grapple with the day!" exclaimed Dum. That sounded good to Dee and me, so we all piled into our bathing suits. I felt rather strange in mine and very youthful, never before having had one on. Father and I had had several nice trips together but we had always gone to some city and had never taken in a seaside resort. I had a notion I was going to like the water and almost knew I would not be afraid. I determined to look upon the ocean as just a large-sized hat-tub.
"Hadn't we better start the kitchen fire before we go out, Dum?" I asked.
"I'm not Dum! I'm Dee! Dum's gone to peek at Zebedee to see if he is awake." For the first time in my acquaintance with the Tucker Twins I found myself at a loss to tell them apart. Of course it was Dee. The eyes were grey and there was a dimple in her chin, but the bathing cap concealed her hair and forehead; and, after all, the colour of the twins' hair and the way it grew on their foreheads were the chief points of difference. Their eyes were exactly the same shape if they were of different colours, and a difference that you had to stare at to find out was not much of a difference after all.
Dum came back to announce that Zebedee was awake and would join us in a moment, so we raced down to the kitchen, careful not to make any noise and wake up poor Miss Cox. We started the fire and put on the tea kettle and, as an afterthought, I went back and filled the Marion Harland percolator, putting in plenty of coffee. The morning was rather chilly and I knew that when we got back from our dip, coffee would not go amiss.
"Front door wide open! What kind of a locker-up are you, Zebedee, anyhow?" chided Dum.
"Well, I could have sworn I shut it last night and locked it. In fact, I can swear it."
"Well, if we had burglars they didn't burgle any. The pure German silver is all intact and the blue tea-pot is still on the mantelpiece. Come on, I'll race you to the water's edge," and Dum and Zebedee were off like two children, while Dee and I followed.
"Someone's out ahead of us," said Zebedee, pointing to a head far out in the bay. "Some swimmer, too! Just look how fast he's going!" The swimmer was taking long, even strokes and was shooting through the water like a fish.
How I did envy that swimmer! I felt very slim and very shy as I walked gingerly to the water's edge and let the waves creep up on my feet and ankles. The Tuckers wanted to stay with me but I would not hear of it. I knew that they were longing to get out into deep water and I have always had a wholesome dread of being a nuisance. They plunged in and were off like a school of porpoise, one minute under water and the next leaping high into the air. They seemed to be truly amphibious animals while I felt very much of an earthworm. I walked out in the bay up to my chin and then decided that I would try to swim back, although I had no more idea of how a body went to work to swim than to fly.
I lay down on the water and felt my feet rising to the surface and then a panic seized me, and such another struggling and splashing and gurgling as I was guilty of! My head went under and my feet refused to leave the surface. I thought I would surely drown, although I knew perfectly well I was not beyond my depth. Foolish poetry flashed into my brain:
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white,
And yet you incessantly stand on your head —
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
I