"Plenty cold and you’re getting blue," replied Mrs. Merrill with a keen look at her little girl. "Let’s go up and sit in the warm sand for a while. Alice, you come up the line, here, nearer to shore, and then as soon as I get Mary Jane settled in the sand snug and warm, I’ll come back and take you out farther." Left by herself a few minutes later, Mary Jane dug herself into the sand and buried her feet, her legs, and tossed the sand over her chest. Then, tiring of that amusement, she shook herself free of the sand, stood up and looked around and—but—after that nobody seemed to know just what Mary Jane did do. Ten minutes after she left her so comfortably settled with her play, Mrs. Merrill and Alice, flushed and laughing with their fun in the waves, ran up the beach to where Mary Jane had been playing. But no Mary Jane was there to greet them! Quickly Mrs. Merrill looked over the many bathers along the edge of the waves—there was no little girl with bobbed brown hair. Hurriedly she ran and questioned the life-guard; no, he hadn’t seen any little girl in a blue and white suit. The word passed along from one person to another but not a soul could tell where the little girl was. Several had seen her playing and watching her mother and sister but no one had seen her get up and go away. There was lost, one Mary Jane; and a distracted mother and sister together with a beach full of interested people started on a hunt for the missing child. *TEA ON THE TERRACE* Questions and answers flew thick and fast as, one after another, the many bathers at Rye Beach learned that a little girl was lost. "Are you sure she didn’t follow you and go into the water?" asked one. "Awful undertow," whispered another, "if she lost her footing even near the shore—" but Mrs. Merrill turned away so as not to hear any more. "Maybe she went up the beach a way," suggested another. "We looked up there first thing," was the reply. "I don’t know what to think," cried Mrs. Merrill in distraction as the police officer questioned her. "Mary Jane never ran away and I feel sure she wouldn’t now. I don’t think she would disobey me and go into the water—and yet, where is she?" Alice, poor child, forgot about being wet, and ran up and down the beach, hunting and calling her sister. At last, when there seemed nothing else to do, the officer said, "I am sorry to say, madam, that it looks very much as though—" but he never finished his sentence. For at that minute Mary Jane’s voice close by her mother said, "Look, Mother, what I got for you! And there are a lot more too so Alice can pick some." There stood Mary Jane, rosy and dry from the warm sun, her hand full of wild flowers she had picked—somewhere. Mrs. Merrill gathered her up in her arms and hugged her so tight Mary Jane thought she never would get her breath again, then, when she could talk, she asked, "My dear child! Where _were_ you? We’ve hunted and hunted!"