Dora was industriously setting the table for supper. Lucy, at the kitchen dresser, was peeling peaches. Lucy had on a big apron belonging to her mother, and it covered both her and the stool on which she sat. Dora wore a pink apron over her checked pink-and-white dress, and Dora’s apron was just like the big one, only the right size. Lucy owned a proper-sized apron also, but Lucy had been unlucky enough to upset the blueing bottle when she took a dish from the kitchen closet. Her apron wasn’t hurt a bit, but Mrs. Merrill had rinsed it out and now it was flapping on the line in the back yard. The closet floor was bluer than the apron and not so easy to wash. “What makes you think there is a surprise?” asked Dora, standing back from the table to see whether she had remembered everything that anybody could use during supper. No, she had forgotten the pulverized sugar for the peaches. “Because,” said Lucy, “he keeps following Mother everywhere she goes, and I know he is teasing her to do something. I heard him say something about the beach.” Dora stopped in the pantry doorway, her eyes big and blue. “Do you think we can be going to the beach?” she asked eagerly. “My, I hope so!” said Lucy. “We haven’t been away this summer. And Father said last night that the press was going to shut down for the week after Labor Day.” Dora looked out of the window across the street at the low brick building where Father Merrill worked in the printing office. “We had better not ask too many questions,” she said wisely. “Perhaps Uncle Dan is going to take us to White Beach for a day. But we did go to the vacation school, Lucy, and that was a great deal of fun.” “It was,” agreed Lucy. “And it cost a dollar a week. But just one day at the beach would be lovely. I wish the Sunday-school picnic had gone there.” Dora didn’t agree with Lucy. That annual picnic had been held at World’s End Pond. Even the salt water could not be nicer than that place. Just as Lucy finished the last peach, Mrs. Merrill came in. Dora brought the sugar-bowl from the pantry and looked hard at her mother. Sometimes it was possible to tell by Mother’s face how she felt about things. Mrs. Merrill did not seem disturbed, but neither did she look as though she was thinking of anything especially pleasant. She put the rest of the supper on the table and told Lucy to call her father and Uncle Dan. It was Uncle Dan who told the secret. Right in the middle of supper he turned to his sister. “You know, Molly,” he began, “Jack says I may have his tent and we should need only one.” “_Dan!_” said Mother Merrill, and everybody was still. The children looked at Uncle Dan. Then Father Merrill laughed. “A tent!” shrieked Lucy. Dora jumped right out of her chair and ran around the table to her uncle. “Are we going, too?” she asked quite breathlessly. “Can I sleep in a tent? I never did, you know.” Mr. Merrill laughed again, and this time Dan laughed with him.