rocks are very handy, and it
will not be much of a job."

Polly made a face at him. "I know how much you'll throw us over," she
said. "You'd better not try it with me, you sinful evil-doer."

"You see what is before you, Ada," said Dick. "You'll rue the day you
consented to have three nieces with you for a whole summer; yet," he
shook his head and said darkly, "I know what can be done if worse comes
to worst."

"What then, Mr. Dicky-Picky?" said Polly.

"That's for me to know and for you to find out," he replied.

"My, ain't she sassy?" said Luella in a loud whisper to Miss Ada, "but
then he ain't no more'n a boy the way he talks."

This was too much for Dick who could not keep his face straight as he
rose from the table quickly. "Who's for the rocks, the cove or the
woods?" he asked.

"The rocks, the rocks, first," cried both little girls.

"I want to show Polly the dear little pools where the star-fish are,
and the cave under the rocks where we found the sea-urchins and where
those queer bluey, diamondy shining things are," said Molly.

Polly squeezed her hand. "Oh, I'm so excited," she said. "I have been
just wild to see all those things."

"You shall see them in short order," her uncle told her. "We keep our
aquarium in the front garden."

"Where is the garden?" asked Polly innocently.

Her uncle laughed as he led the way over the hummocks down the rugged
path to the rocks. Here they clambered over crags and barnacled
boulders till they came to a quiet pool reflecting the blue of the sky.
Its sides were fringed with floating sea-weeds and it was peopled by
many sorts of strange creatures which thrived upon the supplies brought
in by the ocean with its tides. A green crab scuttled out of sight
under some pebbles; a purple star-fish crept softly from behind a bunch
of waving crimson weeds; a sea-anemone opened and shut its living
petals; by peering under the shelving rock one could see the dainty
shell of a sea-urchin.

Polly gazed astonished at the pool's wonders. "It is like fairy-land,"
she whispered. "I never saw anything so beautiful. Can we come here
every day and will the little pools with these queer creatures always
be just this way?"

"We can always come at low tide," Molly told her.

"Then I'll always come down here at this time every day."

"But it will not be low tide always at this time," said Molly.

"Oh, won't it?" returned inland little Polly, quite taken aback. "Why