s of chocolate out of her pockets, and though at first it
seemed like a small luncheon, when it was all eaten they felt satisfied.

All the afternoon the children played up and down the beach. They found
a smooth round pink sea-shell which they used for a ball. Eric was the
best at throwing. It made him happy and proud to excel in something at
last. He taught them how to play base ball, which he had once watched
Mrs. Freg's boys playing on Sundays in the back yard. They used a piece
of drift wood for a bat, and when the shell got accidentally batted into
the sea the Blue Water Children fielded it like fishes.

When they were tired of ball, the Blue Water Children drew lines on the
sand for "hop scotch,"--a game they had sometimes watched city children
playing in a park,--and taught Ivra and Eric about that.

Then they built a castle of sand, and walled it in with sea shells.
Helma showed them how to make the moat and the bridge, and Sally and she
took turns and made up a story about the castle and told it to them.

Towards evening some Earth People came by, near to the shore, in a
little steam launch. There were men and women and several children in
it. They crowded into the side of the boat towards the shore to stare
curiously at Helma and Eric. They could not see the others, of course.
Helma with her free, bright hair and bare feet looked very strange to
them. And they could not understand what Eric was doing with his arms
held straight out at each side. He was between Dan and Nan, holding
their hands, and standing to watch. But the Earth People looked right
through the Blue Water Children, or thought they were shadows perhaps.

One of the men put his hands to his mouth like a megaphone and called to
Helma, asking her if she did not want to be picked up. They thought her
being there in that wild place with a little boy, alone, and barefooted,
very singular. They thought she might have been shipwrecked. But Helma
shook her head, and so they had to take their wonder away with them. The
boat swept by.

Ivra ran out into the waves waist deep to watch the strange thing. She
had never seen a steam launch before, or anything like it. A baby, held
in his nurse's arms, caught sight of her and waved tiny dimpled hands,
calling and cooing. She saw his sparkling eyes, his light fuzzy hair,
his little white dress and socks. She ran farther into the water, waving
back to him and throwing him dozens of kisses. But no one else in