"I've missed Lav dreadfully. I didn't know how much I missed him and Mart until today when it came over me suddenly that the things I was doing with Pola weren't really much fun--just at first they were because they were different. I'm afraid, Aunt Achsa, that I love different things! But tomorrow I am going to play all day long with Lav and Mart, see if I don't. I can't wait for tomorrow to come!" CHAPTER XVIII "HOOK!" Sidney found it a little difficult to take up the fun with her erstwhile chums where she had left off. When she stopped at the Calkins' house directly after breakfast, Mart coolly declined to go anywhere with her, and smiled scornfully at her bare legs. "I s'pose your million-dollar friend is otherwise engaged today!" Sidney truthfully admitted that she was. "She's gone to Chatham with her mother to see some people they know. And I'm glad. I've been just dying for a good swim. Let's go out to the _Arabella_ this morning." But Mart declared she was tired of all that. In fact she was tired of doing lots of the silly things they'd been doing. She'd promised Gert Bartow to go there right after lunch. Sidney had no choice but to go on alone in search of Lav. She was discouraged to the point of tears. Yet she knew in her heart that she deserved Mart's coldness. She remembered how she had felt once when Nancy had deserted her for a new girl at Miss Downs'. And it had seriously threatened their friendship. As she wandered slowly toward the town Sidney wondered what Mart and Gert Bartow were going to do. Gert Bartow was a girl of nineteen at least, and much more grown up than even that. Mart had pointed her out to Sidney. Sidney wished Mart had asked her to go with her to Gert's. She felt very lonely. Perhaps she had spoiled everything. Pola would come back, of course, but, somehow, Pola's glamour had faded. After all, what, besides tons of candy and quarts of sweet mixtures and much glitter, had there been to it? The sweets and the glitter and Pola's endless confidences of "men" had left Sidney jaded and bored, though she did not know it; she did know that she was suddenly lonely for Mart and Lav and the stimulating pastimes they seemed to find always right at hand. As she approached Rockman's, wandering there from force of habit, she saw Lav pushing off in a dory. She ran down the wharf, hailing him. "Oh, Lav, take me with you!" she pleaded, breathlessly. He hesitated a moment before he swung the dory back to the wharf. Something of the look Mart had given her flashed into his eyes. Then: "Come on if y'want to," he answered ungraciously. As she sat down in the bow of the boat Sidney wanted to cry more than anything else, but Lav's dark face suddenly reminded her of what Aunt Achsa had told her. Perhaps he had been out in the sand dunes last night, lying on his face, sobbing aloud! She began chattering with resolute cheerfulness.