Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/18

4 of view to me; how beautiful is the blue of the ocean on a day like this!”

Nor could any one who stood in Julia’s place call her over-enthusiastic. The cloudless June sky gave the water the color of the deepest sapphire. Here and there the tip of a billow flashed in the sunlight like the facet of  a cut gem. Far at the edge of the horizon two or three small sails sped along as with birds’ wings. The lighthouse in the distance, the little island with the fisherman’s hut, the small boats anchored off the point, all combined  to make the scene a very beautiful one.

“Let me carry it,” cried Brenda, as the driver lifted a camp-chair from the carriage.

“Why, thank you, I suppose that I could let Thomas take it to the bath-house, but it is better for him not to  leave the horses. If I had n’t worn a long skirt, I’d carry it myself.”

“Oh, it’s nothing to carry!” replied Brenda, and she trudged along, picking her way through the sand, with the chair under one arm, and a large silk handkerchief containing her bathing suit slung over the other.

“We ’ll not be the only bathers on the beach,” and Julia pointed to a group already floundering in the water.

“Oh, no, but there won’t be quarter as many as there will be in a fortnight. It will be a great deal more exciting then.”

“Exciting,” for the time being, was Brenda’s favorite word for describing anything that she considered very  amusing, and she used the word on all possible occasions.