“Nan and Dan tear their clothes so,” sighed Sally, “I could spend all my time mending.”

“I must make little Eric some new clothes,” said Helma.  “I hope I have cloth enough at home.”

“Nan is naughty, but she is a darling,” laughed Sally as Eric was pushed under the surf.

Helma waited to see that he came up smiling and then said, “Ivra and Eric never quarrel.  They play together from morn till night like two squirrels.”

. . .  They all had lunch together on the shore.  The Blue Water Children instead of eating smelled some spring flowers which Sally had found.  That is the way they always take their nourishment.  Helma turned some little cakes of chocolate out of her pockets, and though at first it seemed like a small luncheon, when it was all eaten they felt satisfied.

All the afternoon the children played up and down the beach.  They found a smooth round pink sea-shell which they used for a ball.  Eric was the best at throwing.  It made him happy and proud to excel in something at last.  He taught them how to play base ball, which he had once watched Mrs. Freg’s boys playing on Sundays in the back yard.  They used a piece of drift wood for a bat, and when the shell got accidentally batted into the sea the Blue Water Children fielded it like fishes.

When they were tired of ball, the Blue Water Children drew lines on the sand for “hop scotch,”—­a game they had sometimes watched city children playing in a park,—­and taught Ivra and Eric about that.

Then they built a castle of sand, and walled it in with sea shells.  Helma showed them how to make the moat and the bridge, and Sally and she took turns and made up a story about the castle and told it to them.

Towards evening some Earth People came by, near to the shore, in a little steam launch.  There were men and women and several children in it.  They crowded into the side of the boat towards the shore to stare curiously at Helma and Eric.  They could not see the others, of course.  Helma with her free, bright hair and bare feet looked very strange to them.  And they could not understand what Eric was doing with his arms held straight out at each side.  He was between Dan and Nan, holding their hands, and standing to watch.  But the Earth People looked right through the Blue Water Children, or thought they were shadows perhaps.

One of the men put his hands to his mouth like a megaphone and called to Helma, asking her if she did not want to be picked up.  They thought her being there in that wild place with a little boy, alone, and barefooted, very singular.  They thought she might have been shipwrecked.  But Helma shook her head, and so they had to take their wonder away with them.  The boat swept by.

Ivra ran out into the waves waist deep to watch the strange thing.  She had never seen a steam launch before, or anything like it.  A baby, held in his nurse’s arms, caught sight of her and waved tiny dimpled hands, calling and cooing.  She saw his sparkling eyes, his light fuzzy hair, his little white dress and socks.  She ran farther into the water, waving back to him and throwing him dozens of kisses.  But no one else in the boat saw her, and after a minute the baby’s attention turned to a sea gull flying overhead.