ove to be somewhere
where she doesn't need to play the society game, or dress----"

"Back to the Garden of Eden for hers!" chuckled Bobby. "Eve didn't
have to dress--that is, not before _Fall_."

"Aren't you awful, Bobby?" cried one of the Lockwood twins--but
_which_ one it was who spoke could not have been sworn to by their
most familiar friend. Dora and Dorothy looked just alike, dressed just
alike, their voices were alike, and they usually acted in perfect
harmony, too!

"Well," pursued Laura Belding, "if we are going to spend the first
weeks of the summer vacation in camp, we must decide upon the spot at
once. Are we all agreed that we shall not go to the salt water?"

"Oh, yes!" cried her particular chum, Jess, or Josephine, Morse.

"None of the troubles of the seaside boarder for ours," Bobby
announced, hurriedly groping amid the rubbish in her skirt pocket and
bringing forth a crumpled newspaper clipping. Bobby insisted upon
having a pocket in almost every garment she wore (it was whispered
that she wore pajamas at night for that reason) and no boy ever
carried a more heterogeneous collection in his pockets than she did.

"See here! here's one seaside visitor's complaint," and she intoned in
a singsong voice the following doggerel:

"'Why don't red-headed girls get tanned?
Why does a collar wilt?
Why is the sea so near the land?
Why were the billows built?
Why is the "crawl-stroke" hard to learn?
Why is the sea bass shy?
Why is the nose the first to burn?
Why is the stinging fly?

"'Why do mosquito nettings leak?
Why do all fishers lie?
Why does the grunter-fish always squeak?
Why do they feed us on clam-pie?
Why does the boardwalk hurt the feet?
Why is the seaweed green?
Why can't a bathing suit look neat?
Why won't straw hats stay clean?

"'Why----'"

"Stop it!" shrieked Jess, covering her ears. "How _dare_ you read such
preposterous stuff?"

"'Whys to the wise,' you know," giggled Bobby.

"I vote we refuse to allow Bobby to go camping with the crowd unless
she positively refrains from quoting verse on any and every occasion,"
drawled Nellie.

"Hardhearted creature!" cried Dora Lockwood. "Poor Bobs couldn't live
without that