"If there's anything exasperating on earth it's a man!" she exclaimed. "Well"--for John laughed, "excuse me, Mr. Dunham, you can't help it; but men never know when anything is interesting. Now I can tell you just where you'll find those girls, and I'm going to let you go. You take that path through the woods, and it'll bring you into an open field, but you'll still see a path. Keep right on till if you took another step you'd fall about fifty feet and have to swim. There you'll find a huddle of ledges and ravines and brave little firs that have hooked their roots into the rock somehow, and there you'll find also a couple of girls who went down to write letters, and I know haven't written a word; and do keep an eye on your watch and get them here by quarter past one. Things are so much nicer when they are hot and good, and Edna is no more to be trusted than if she was five. If she happened to get to watching a barnacle eat its dinner she'd never once think of her own." Just at present Miss Derwent was certainly not thinking of dinner. The tide was falling, and she and her companion were seated amid the sighing firs and watching its retreat; that is, Sylvia was watching, and Edna was reading aloud to her. At last Edna looked up from her book and leaned forward to look over the ledge. "It is low enough," she said. "Let us go down there, Sylvia. I want to show you the pools." Leaving their books and papers covered from the breeze with a shawl, the girls climbed down the rough rocks. "We call this the giant's bath-tub," said Edna, when they reached an oblong hollow rock brimming with brine. "I'd hate to take a bath with some of those creatures," remarked Sylvia, her eyes on certain small objects of various shapes. "I, too; and see how crusted the rock is with barnacles. How their edges do cut! Dear little things, they'll go to sleep now till the tide comes back again." "Go to sleep!" laughed Sylvia. "As if they were anything but gray stones!" "Indeed, you are mistaken. I wonder if I could wake one of those fellows up," and Miss Derwent splashed water over one of the stony clusters. They remained lifeless. "The tide has left them too recently," she said. "They're not hungry." "Oh, Edna,--I mean Miss Derwent." "No, call me Edna. I'd like you to. Sometimes I can make them open those stiff shells and put out five little fingers to gather in their food." Sylvia shook her head. "You've told me lots of fairy stories the last two days, but that is the most improbable. What are you doing?" "Getting you a sea urchin." Edna had rolled her sleeves to the shoulder and was plunging her arm into the water. She brought out a spiny prize. "What is it covered with? Wet grass?" asked Sylvia, regarding the blackish object with disfavor. "Why, you said those charming lavender candlesticks of yours, all embroidered in tiny holes, were sea urchins."