o reply to her
observations. Meantime the group had come to a standstill and were
selecting a nice place on the beach to spend the morning hours.

Dotty was enchanted with her first real experience of the seashore.

She sat down in the sand with the rest, but quickly made her way to the
front of the group and as near as possible to the edge of the waves in
her effort to get an unobstructed view of the ocean. The surf was
rolling in and the great breakers filled her with awe and delight.

"Come farther back, Dotty," Tad Brown called out, "or you'll get caught
by some of those swells."

Dotty drew back just in time to escape a wetting from a big wave whose
white foam rolled up the sands to her very feet.

"Isn't it wonderful!" she cried; "I could sit right here all day and
never take my eyes off those waves!"

But the sight was not so novel to the others, and they talked and
laughed and threw sand at each other and built forts and watched for
passing steamers and made plans for future amusements.

"That's the worst of the seashore," said Pauline, discontentedly;
"there's so little to do. Just walk the boardwalk or sit on the sand or
bathe; that's about all."

"Nonsense, Polly," said her brother Carroll; "there's lots else to do.
Going motoring or walking in the woods, and there's a bowling alley at
the hotel and tennis courts--there's millions of things to do, only
you're such an old grouch you never see the fun of anything."

Pauline paid no attention to this brotherly remark, but said to Dotty,
"Come on, let's go for a walk; I want to get acquainted with you."

"Get acquainted here," said Dotty, laughing. "I'm too comfortable to
move."

The Brown boys had banked up a big hill of sand behind Dotty, and she
leaned back against it, still fascinated by the wonderful blue of the
distant ocean sparkling in the sunlight and the mad onrush of the great
breakers as they dashed on the shore.

"Then you come," said Pauline to Dolly; "let's go off by ourselves and
walk along toward the casino and the shops.

"All right," said Dolly, who was tired of sitting on the sand and quite
ready for a walk. Moreover, she was curious to know more of Pauline. She
wasn't sure she should like a girl who asked her point blank if she
were rich, and yet Pauline didn't seem ostentatious or vulgar, but was
quick-witted and full of fun.

The two walked away, leaving the rest of the crowd, some six or eight of
them, on the beach.

As