“Don’t be a fool, John,” she counselled the keeper. “The child will be home two months or more in summer. You won’t be on duty on the beach then, and we can all four--you and she and Hosea and myself--be together. She’s got to have something in her life besides Blue Port, and she’s got to have something in her life besides those three boys. They’re all right as boys go,” she added in qualification, “but I don’t suppose you want her to stay here and spend her life as your daughter and my niece, the Vanton boy’s sister, Tommy Lupton’s sweetheart, and Dickie Hand’s mother!” “Seems to me, Keturah,” interjected her new husband, Ho Ha, “being all those things would be considerable.” “It isn’t anything to be somebody,” his wife answered. “On the other hand, there’s a lot of tomfoolery in the talk of ‘doing’ this and that. There’s no sense in doing anything unless it’s going to enable you to be somebody, and there’s no sense in being somebody unless it enables you to do something.” “Hold on, hold on,” protested Ho Ha. “You go too fast for me to follow you. I didn’t marry you for your philosophy.” “Well, you have to take my philosophy along with the rest,” said Keturah, briskly. “I didn’t marry you to bake pancakes every morning of my life, but I guess I’ll have to.” “There’s a lot of philosophy in pancakes,” asserted Ho Ha. “They go flip-flop, and that’s the way life goes.” “That’s why these people who can turn somersaults gracefully always get along well, eh?” said Cap’n Smiley with a grin. “To stick to the subject and not to the griddle,” resumed Keturah, “the child ought to go away this fall. She likes chemistry and she likes cooking and she mixes all sorts of messes in both. I live in constant dread that she’ll serve me some good-tasting poison by accident or that the baked potatoes will explode. I don’t know anything about this scientific cookery you hear so much about, but Mermaid might as well get what there is in it. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, though I must say that the job of filling his stomach is about all a woman could be expected to handle.” She looked at Ho Ha, a notable eater. “Well, then, I think she might spend this summer on the beach with me--with all of us,” amended Cap’n Smiley. “I’ll be there anyway this year. You and Hosea and Mermaid can take the Biggles house, or something more sizable if you want; there’s plenty of little houses within a quarter of a mile of the station.” Mermaid, entering, had heard her Dad’s suggestion and clapped her hands in applause. “That’ll be splendid!” she cried. “Captain Vanton has taken a little bungalow, and Guy is going to be over there; Tommy Lupton and Dickie Hand are going to spend August camping on the beach; so we’ll have company all summer!” The three adults exchanged amused glances. XV