Don't be 'fraid of any old sand," he assured her when she put his weenie
in his roll so very carefully, "I eat 'em any way--sand or not."

Betty eyed Mary Jane a bit enviously. This being chief cook and having a
chance to fill the rolls of each person must surely be fun.

"Next time we have a beach party," she announced between bites, "_I'm_
going to fall into the lake too!"

"I'll save you the trouble," replied Mr. Holden understandingly, "I'll let
you be chief cook without getting wet."

Betty needn't have worried about Mary Jane's being willing to give up her
job. For there was one disadvantage in that position Miss Betty hadn't
thought of and Mary Jane had just discovered--the head cook had no time to
eat. And Mary Jane was getting fearfully hungry. She was more than willing
to give up the big fork, let Betty fill her roll for her and stand up with
the others to eat the good hot morsel.

Did anything ever taste as good as those hot weenie sandwiches, eaten
there on the edge of Lake Michigan, with the fine lake air blowing in
their faces and the sunshine warming them and making them forget the chill
of the long winter? The Merrills thought they had never had so much fun
and tasted such good things. Every weenie (and there had seemed to be far
too many) was eaten up; every roll disappeared and cookies and pickles and
sandwiches just vanished as though a warm breeze had melted them away.

Supper over, the sun going down reminded the children that they must get
the fire ready for dark. They scampered up and down the broad beach,
gathering together all the pieces of drift wood they could find. Later in
the year wood along that beach would be hard to find. But in the early
spring, before the driftings of the winter's storms had been burned up by
picnickers like themselves, there was plenty to be had.

Linn and Ed put away the cooking rack in the case they had made for it,
the two mothers packed up debris and burned it so the beach would be left
clean and tidy, and all the others gathered wood. Such a lot as they did
find! Linn piled it on high and by the time the sun went to sleep in the
west, the fire was so bright that nobody noticed the growing darkness.
They all sat around on the warm sand and sang--college songs that the
children had learned from the fathers, school songs and popular songs that
they all knew. It was fun to sit there close by the big lake, to watch the
sparks fly upward, to hear the waves swish a