oing to keep them."

"They're pretty of course," Gwen admitted, "but it must be a horrid
job to keep them in order. Leave them where they are and come out on
the beach."

"Oh, I can't," said Sprite, and she was about to say that she must
place her shells and coral in safe positions before going out, but
Gwen did not wait to hear what she had intended to say.

Instead, she hurried out, banging the door behind her.

"I'll find someone who'll do as I want to," she declared, and she ran
up the beach to find Princess Polly, but Princess Polly and Rose were
both at Avondale, and Gwen ran on to the center of the little coast
village.

"I'll find someone to play with, I don't care who it is," she said, as
she raced along.

When the sea trophies were all in their places, Sprite stepped back to
view her work.

A smile curved her lips, and her eyes grew brighter.

"They look finer than they ever did before," she said softly, "and now
I'll try to keep them just as they are arranged."

Sprite Seaford was often called a little "Water Witch," from the fact
that she was so much at home on the water.

She could swim wonderfully well for so small a girl, and she managed
her boat with skill.

After another approving glance at the rows of softly tinted shells,
she ran out onto the beach, and soon in her boat she was gliding along
on the shallow water near the shore, her oars moving with slow
precision, keeping time to the song that she was singing, or rather to
the songs that she was singing, for she was making a gay little medley
of many familiar tunes.

The light breeze lifted her long, waving hair, and let it flutter back
from her face, it kissed her cheeks, and made them pink like the
shells that she valued most.

The great gulls hovered overhead, flapping their wings, and circling
about as if trying to determine what sort of little being it was that
boasted such long tresses.

Skimming over a bit of shallow water, she chanced to look down and
there, on the sandy bottom, was a shell, different in shape from any
in her collection.

"I must have it," she cried, and in a second she had drawn the oars
into the boat, had slipped into the shallow water, and having pushed
the light boat toward the shore, swam along under water until she came
to the spot where the shell lay.

She came up to the surface to get the air, laughed, and swam downward
again, snatched the coveted shell, and then made her way to where the
little