Though from the first day of her coming Sidney, moved by a sense of the courtesy to be expected from a guest, had insisted that they include Lavender in all their plans, at the same time she had wished that he would refuse for she could not conquer a shyness with him. He was a boy and she had never known any boys very well, and he was a "different" boy. But Mart did not mind him at all; she played tolerantly with him, quarreled cheerfully and bitterly with him, laughed with him and at him exactly as though he were a girl like herself or she the boy that she should have been, gran'ma considered. On this day Mr. Dugald had taken Lavender to the backside. He had not invited the girls to join them which had roused Sidney's curiosity. She had watched them depart, loaded down with books and stools and an easel and a box of lunch and had wondered what they were going to do all day, alone, in the dunes. She was soon to know that those hours were sacred to Lavender, that in the great silences of the sandy stretches he and his Mr. Dugald with their books went far from the Cape and Sunset Lane and the crooked body. The girls, left to themselves, had decided to go clamming. Of all the novel things she had done in the last two weeks Sidney liked clamming best. It was even more fun than the _Arabella_ for after all the _Arabella_ was only pretend. She liked to feel her bare toes suck up the goosy sand as she stepped over the wet beds. She could never dig as fast as Mart or Lavender because she had to stop and watch the sky and the clouds and the moving sails and the swooping seagulls. "You'd never make a living digging clams," Martie had scolded. (Mart herself could dig faster than old Jake Newberry who had peddled clams through the town for fifty years. Mart had sometimes sold hers at the hotels.) "There's so much to _look_ at!" Sidney had answered, drawing in a long happy breath. "_Look_ at! What? All I can see is sky and water and a lot of that and that ain't nothing new." "But it is always different! The sky gets bluer and the clouds pinker and the water dances just as though there were sprites hiding in each wave." "Gee, anyone 'ud think you were a poet!" Mart had laughed and at that Sidney had fallen hastily to digging. Now, as they lay on the beach, hot and happy, their basket of clams between them, Sidney's thoughts went back to Lavender's and Mr. Dugald's mysterious departure. "We've had just as much fun," she declared, aloud. "What d'you mean? Oh--Lav. Pooh, yes. Who'd want t'go off in the sand and sit in the hot sun all day? _I_ wouldn't." "Aunt Achsa packed them an awfully good lunch," Sidney reflected. "Sure she did. She spoils Lav like anything. Gran'ma says it's a shame. And what _she_ doesn't spoil that boarder does." For an instant Sidney flared with resentment at her companion's tone. However she realized that she was at a disadvantage in that she had only known these people for only two weeks and Mart for her whole lifetime.