One of the very last things was to go to the Public Library and choose some books to take with them. For, as Mrs. Merrill said, it might rain at the beach, and then they would be glad of something to read. The children did not wish to think of rain, but they chose the library books with great care. Lucy decided to take “What Katy Did,” but Dora could not find any book which seemed suited to so important an occasion. Finally she asked the librarian, Miss Perkins, to choose one for her. When Miss Perkins knew that the story must last a week and was to be read at the beach, she agreed that no ordinary book would do. She went to a shelf in the back of the library and brought Dora the “Story of Doctor Dolittle.” “You will like this book very much, Dora,” she said. “And I think your Uncle Dan will like it, too. It is a new book, just put into the library, so you will take very good care of it, won’t you?” “Oh, I will!” said Dora, who had caught sight of the funny pictures in the text. “I will be very careful of it, Miss Perkins.” “And is Arcturus going to the beach with you?” asked Miss Perkins as she slipped “Doctor Dolittle” into an envelope for safe traveling. Dora explained that Arcturus would benefit from sea air, and Miss Perkins at once said that it would do him good. CHAPTER II AT THE BEACH The house where the Merrills lived in Westmore was a brown cottage, but it seemed large and like a palace when the children saw the shack at the beach. Still, they liked the shack very much. The front room had a couch and chairs, and a square table which could be used for eating. There was one wee bedroom and the smallest kitchen ever seen. That kitchen was hardly so large as a good-sized cupboard. Mrs. Merrill could stand in its centre and reach everything on all four walls. It contained a little sink and an oil stove and some dishes,—not a great many dishes, but that made fewer to wash. The shack stood on a hard sandy ridge, not near any other house. Behind, the sand sloped to a road where automobiles were always passing. In front there was sand that slid around under foot, and then a broad hard beach and the wonderful ocean. When the children came on that sunny Saturday, for it was sunny in spite of all their watching the sky, the sea was a deep blue, with white fringes on the shore, where the waves ran up and then slid back again. The sand looked grayish-green, but when the water touched it, it turned shiny. Dora could not take her eyes off the ocean. She forgot that she had wished to see Uncle Dan and Jack Simmons put up the tent. They pitched it near the shack, on the south side, and drove the poles and the pegs in just as hard as they could hammer them, so that the wind would not loosen the ropes.