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 you're a bigger woman than I take you for"; and I squared off and looked fierce. "I'll have you all know that I'm no educated caterpillar, and you don't get any more free performances out of me. Come on, I'm going wading, and if you girls see me duck my head again to-day, for goodness' sake, grab me; for I don't want to get started on any more trips like that."

We had a lot of fun in the water, and then wound up with a game of tag on the beach; and just as we were going to get on our shoes and stockings, Twinny came out from the hollow where the drift-wood was, with a big tumble-weed, left over from last year. It was a great globe of stiff stems and twigs, as light as a sponge and nearly as large as a bushel basket. I'd never seen one before, and I took it to examine it, when suddenly a gust of wind snatched it out of my hand and tossed it away up in the air, like a balloon; and when it came down it didn't lie still, but started off down the beach at a perfectly astonishing gait. I saw right off why they called it a "tumble-weed."

We started after it, but we might as well have chased a running horse, for we weren't in it at all. The thing hurtled along the smooth sand,