“All right, it’s a bargain!” and Cathalina stretched out a little hand browned by the sun of the summer by the shore. “Then there’ll be Gym, of course,” added Hilary. “I’m excused from the gymnasium work and going to take swimming and riding lessons. I learned to float this summer, was always too afraid to try it before.” “I’m going in for tennis and basketball. I’m crazy about basketball. But come on, let’s go to the beach. I can almost hear those waves calling!” “I hear you calling me!” sang Cathalina, as they started with no further delay. If Mother Sylvia and Father Philip had seen their daughter as she raced with Hilary down the bank to the beach, they surely would have thought that a miracle had happened. Poor little Cathalina had needed “somebody to play with”. She was breathless and sat on the sand with color in her cheeks and panting from the exercise which hardly disturbed sturdy Hilary. A few other girls were there, too, throwing pebbles into the water, or wading out a short distance, or watching the gulls and terns through field glasses. Out by the breakwater, the birds were flying and fishing, sometimes coming quite near to rest on the posts by the little dock further down the shore. There was the boathouse, locked now; and fast to the dock was a handsome little launch, “Greycliff” painted on her side. “O-oo-oh!” exclaimed Hilary. “I just won’t want to study at all! Boats and a launch!” “Don’t worry!” said a fat little girl who was sitting on the sand not far from Cathalina. “They only let us go on that at certain times.” “I don’t care,” sang Hilary,—“I know I’ll be in it some time before I die, anyhow! Do they let you go out in the boats?” “Yes, according to rules. And we have canoeing on the river, too, and races sometimes.” “Where’s the river?” “The other side of the grove from Greycliff Hall. Look along there and you can see where it joins the lake.” The two girls presently wandered off alone, along the beautiful beach, until Hilary noticed that Cathalina was especially quiet, and that in their explorations the afternoon had slipped away. “Getting homesick? So’m I. We must be hungry. Come on; it’s a lucky thing at school that meals come three times a day. Mother says that school girls are always hungry.” “If I’m homesick, therefore, I’m hungry? Maybe I am! Anyway let’s go and see if any more girls have come. It seemed to me, Hilary, that some of those children on the beach were too young even for the Academy. Do you suppose they were visitors?”