"You'd better drag up your canoe further," called out the barefooted girl. "It'll float away if you leave it like that." "Oh, I'm coming right back!" replied the other. "I'm only stopping a moment to get some candy." She disappeared into the pavilion and was out again in two minutes, bearing a large box of candy, of the most expensive make boasted by Carter's Landing. Down the steps she tripped, and crossed the strip of sand toward her canoe. But in front of the occupied rowboat she stopped, drawn perhaps by the need of companionship on this beautiful but solitary afternoon. "Have some?" she asked, proffering the open box of candy. The barefooted girl's eyes sparkled. "Why, yes, thanks!" she answered, and gingerly helped herself to one small piece. "Oh, take some more! There's plenty!" declared her companion, emptying fully a quarter of the box into her new friend's lap. "And give some to the baby." The younger child smiled broadly, removed her thumb from her mouth and began to munch ecstatically on a large piece of chocolate proffered by her sister. "You're awfully kind," remarked the older girl between two bites, "but what'll your mother say?" "Why, she won't care. She gave me the money and told me to go get it and amuse myself. It's awfully dull up at the hotel. It's so early in the season that there's almost nobody else there,--only two old ladies and a few men that come down at night,--besides Mother and myself. I hate going to the country so early, before things start, only Mother has been sick and needed the change right away. So here we are--and I'm as dull as dishwater and _so_ lonesome! What's your name?" The other girl had been drinking in all this information with such greedy interest that she scarcely heard or heeded the question which ended it. Without further questioning she realized that this new acquaintance was a guest at "The Bluffs," the one exclusive and fashionable hotel on the river. She at once became guiltily conscious of her own bare brown toes, still wriggling in the warm sand. She blamed herself fiercely for not taking the trouble to put on her shoes and stockings that afternoon. Up till this moment it had scarcely seemed worth while. "Tell me, what's your name?" the girl in white and pink reiterated. "Sarah," she answered, "but most every one calls me Sally. What's yours?" "Doris Craig," was the reply and the girl of the bare toes unconsciously noted that "Doris" was an entirely fitting name for so dainty a creature. And somehow she dreaded to answer the question as to her own. "My name's horrid," she added, "and I always did hate it. But baby's is pretty,--Genevieve. Mother named her that, 'cause Father had insisted that mine must be 'Sarah,' after his mother. She said she was going to have one pretty name in the family, anyway. Genevieve, take your thumb out of your mouth!" "Why do you tell her to do that?" demanded Doris, curiously.