Read Ebook: The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View; Or The Box That Was Found in the Sand by Hope Laura Lee

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1399 lines and 38766 words, and 28 pages

"In about a week," Allen said. "We're having the engine overhauled, a new magneto put in and some other things done."

"I'm coming in the auto," broke in Percy Falconer. "Father did not want me to make the boat trip, but the chauffeur will bring me down to the shore in the car."

"Pity he wouldn't use a feather bed," murmured Roy Anderson.

"Oh, here comes the train!" cried Mollie. "Girls, I'm almost sure I've forgotten half my things."

"Good-bye, girls!" chorused the boys.

"Good-bye!" came the answer.

"Oh, Grace!" called Will to his sister.

"Yes," she answered.

"That secret of mine."

"I'll tell you--when I come down!" his words floated to her as she was borne along the platform with her chums to the train that was to take them to Ocean View.

OLD TIN-BACK

"Isn't he provoking!" murmured Grace, sinking into a seat beside Mollie, as the train slowly pulled out.

"Who?" asked Mollie, leaning toward the window to wave to the boys on the platform.

"My brother Will. He's up to something--he has a secret and he won't tell me!"

"Don't let him know you care, and he'll tell you all the quicker. Boys are that way," declared Mollie, with the accumulated wisdom of--say--seventeen years.

"Yes, I suppose so," agreed Grace, and then she began a hurried search among the various articles she had deposited on the seat between herself and Mollie.

"What is it--lost something?" asked the latter.

"My bag of--oh, here they are," and Grace, with a look of contentment, began munching some chocolates.

"It is awfully nice of you, Mrs. Nelson, to ask us down for the summer," said Amy Blackford to her hostess when they were settled in the speeding train. "I do so love the seashore."

"Then I think you will like it at Ocean View," remarked Betty's mother. "And we think Edgemere a pretty place."

"I'm sure it must be from what Betty has told me."

"Do you like lobsters?" asked Mr. Nelson, looking over the top of his paper, with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Lobsters?" repeated Amy, questioningly. "I haven't eaten many."

"It's a great place for lobsters at Ocean View," went on Betty's father. "That's one reason I decided on it."

"I'm going to take only the plain boiled, and salads," declared Mr. Nelson. "But there's an old lobsterman--Tin-Back, they call him--near Edgemere in whom I think you girls will be interested," he went on. "He's quite a character."

"A tin back? How funny that would be?" laughed Betty.

"You must ask him," declared her father. "I didn't have time when I came down to see if everything was all right."

"Oh, what lovely times we'll have, girls!" sighed Mollie, when, a little later, the four chums were conversing. "We can go sailing, bathing and sit on the sands and watch the tide come in."

"And perhaps find buried pirate-treasure in some cave," added Betty, with a laugh.

"Can we, really?" asked Amy, perhaps the most unsophisticated of the quartette.

"Really what?" asked Grace, silently offering her bag of sweets. The habit was almost automatic with her.

"That's all you can do--read about it," spoke Mollie, regretfully. "There isn't any romance left in this world. If there was a pirate's cave it would be lighted with electricity and an admission fee charged. And yet the New England coast ought to contain some treasure. Some pirates used to land there."

"Did they, Mr. Nelson?" asked Amy, catching sight of Betty's father again glancing over the top of his paper.

"Did pirates ever land on the coast near where we are going?"

"Really?" demanded Amy, with glistening eyes, and flushed cheeks.

"Well, as really as any other treasure story, I suppose," answered Mr. Nelson, while Betty murmured:

"Oh, Daddy! Don't tease her!"

"I'm not!" he declared. "It is possible that there may be some treasure buried in the sand near Ocean View. Stranger things have happened."

"Find what?" asked Grace, who had been looking from the window as they passed through a town.

"Buried treasure," Amy said.

"Oh, I thought you meant Will's secret," observed Grace. "I wonder where that train boy is?" she went on.

"What for?" asked Betty.

"Grace Ford! If you buy another bit of candy before we arrive I--I don't know what I'll do to you!" threatened Betty.

The train rolled on, as all trains do, and, eventually, the little seaside resort of Ocean View was reached. There was the usual scramble on the part of our friends, and other passengers, to alight, and when the girls stood on the rather dingy platform of the station Mollie, looking about her in some disappointment, said:

"Ocean View! I don't see why they call it that. You can't see the ocean at all."

"It's down that way," said Mr. Nelson, with a wave of his hand toward the east. "Property is too valuable along the shore to allow of the village being there. The town is about a mile back from the water. We'll take a carriage to the cottage. You see the railroad doesn't run very close to the ocean."

Ocean View was like most summer resorts, built some distance back from the shore, which property was held by cottage or bungalow owners. There were several shell roads running from the main street of the town down to the water's edge, however. And soon, in a carriage, with their valises piled around them, our party set off for Edgemere, leaving a truckman to bring the trunks.

"Oh what a perfectly dear place!" exclaimed Grace, as the carriage turned along a highway that paralleled the beach. "And how blue the water is!"

They were up on a little elevation. Down below them was a large bay, enclosed in a point of land that ran out into the ocean, forming a perfect breakwater.

"Where is Edgemere?" asked Mollie.

"Over there," answered Betty, pointing.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet