Page:I Know a Secret (1927).pdf/120

 gers. It surprised him very much. Feeling it, in the dark, he couldn't imagine, at first, what it might be. He took it indoors to look at it in the light.

It was a —one of those queer little five-pointed creatures you find on the shore at low tide, scattered about like asterisks. The children had been down to Bar Beach that afternoon. It was November, and winter was coming, and they wanted to say good-bye to the beaches they would not visit again until next spring. They had brought home a star-fish.

And then it suddenly struck the man that this was queer. He had gone out looking for stars. He couldn't find any, but there, in the foggy darkness, he had put his hand right on a star-fish—the last thing you'd expect to find on your front porch. Sometimes he remembers that, in nights that are very black and thick. Even if you can't find a star, there may be a star-fish that will do just as well.

Bar Beach will never again be a lonely little bathing place. Along that shore the gravel barges and bath houses and hot dogs and ice cream cones will soon outnumber the clams and the crabs. But as long as the water of Hempstead