It was as Betty had said. One never knew what interesting happening would come next, though some were planned. New adventures in daily pleasures and one almost tragic event were here for Betty Lee in the few weeks that lay before her in Maine. But she never could get satisfactory photographs of the old sea that stirred her so. Clouds and surf never did come out as they really looked. She concluded that Arthur Penrose or some real artist, who could give the coloring to sky and sea and paint the clouds as they looked, ought to be there to do justice to water and sky. But Betty did not talk much about her feeling of the sea, aside from the joking about the consummation of her desire to swim in it.

The Waites were the first friends to look them up. Marcella came over the next day from a cottage at no great distance, for the Waites had come on by train and arrived before the Gwynne party. She invited them at once to a beach party, “by moonlight,” said she. “We’ll not swim this time, but have a great picnic, with everybody there.” Marcella looked meaningly at Carolyn as she said this.

“Larry’s visiting some of his college friends and will be home in time for the beach party, I think. He may bring his chum with him. We don’t know. If I weren’t so busy, I’d tell you more about everybody. Several girls from our sorority are driving over this afternoon and Peggy Pollard is going to stay.

“Peggy!” exclaimed Carolyn. “Why I invited her with us and she couldn’t come!”

“It’s all changed,” explained Marcella. “After you left, her mother made different arrangements, to go West with one of her sons and his family, I think; and she told Peggy that if she still wanted to come East, she could. Peggy was in a great quandary, but crazy to come. I found it out through one of the girls; and so Peggy’s dear little red head will repose on either your pillow or mine, Carolyn, as you like. Peggy is up the coast a little, with the girls I mentioned, though she came with us.”

“You didn’t mention their names, Marcella, but I can guess or be surprised. If you don’t mind, Marcella, we’ll have Peggy here. Another cot in my room, or two of us in a different room, will fix it.”

“Oh, let’s all be together, Carolyn! It’s such fun!”

“Just as you say, Kathryn.”

The beach party, then, was to be full of surprises. The three girls exhausted the possible list of guests in their surmises and then concluded that it was a waste of time. Unpacking, investigating their surroundings, another swim and a walk up the shore for some distance pretty well filled the day until it was best to “rest up” for the beach party, which began at eight o’clock. “It may be a little ‘spuzzy,’ girls,” suggested Carolyn, “though Marcella did not say so. But if it is to be a sorority affair and perhaps Larry and his chum coming, not to mention others that evidently Marcella means to spring upon us, there will probably be some dressing up.”

“You don’t mean party dresses, do you?” asked Betty, “thin things? I thought at beach parties you wore sweaters or jackets and easy things to rough it in.”

“Sport things, Betty, this time. Yours are all right, and take your white sweater if you wish.”

“I ‘wager’ you know whom Marcella is going to spring upon ‘us’,” remarked Kathryn.

“I know—some,” Carolyn acknowledged. “That is the other secret.”

With great care did the three girls dress for the beach party. There was a “gorgeous” moon and a mild air. Betty scarcely knew herself, she thought, as she looked from the elevation and the shadows of the group of trees about the Gwynne house toward where a line of rollers restlessly met the beach and the light of a full moon fell across the waters. And oh, who would be at the party?

Active figures were darting about on the sands by the time Betty, Carolyn and Kathryn arrived and hurried toward where they saw Marcella by the light of a fire already started on the beach. And who was that, hatless, merry, throwing a big piece of wreckage upon the fire?

“Ted Dorrance!” exclaimed Kathryn. “That’s the other surprise, Carolyn!”

“M’m,” lightly replied Carolyn. “And now don’t faint or anything, Betty. Chet’s here, too.”

Betty did not much like this suggestion and replied that she was not likely to faint at seeing Chet Dorrance anywhere, especially as it was only the other day that she had seen him receive his high school diploma. Betty, usually very sweet about all her friends, felt really annoyed for about two minutes. But Chet’s own hearty and unsentimental greeting assured her.

“Didn’t Carolyn tell you that Ted and I were coming to visit Larry and Marcella?” asked Chet. “Of course it was all fixed up at the last minute. We’ve got Mother settled down at Cape Cod and drove up here with Larry and his room-mate, you know, and a couple of cousins of his room-mate. Come over and meet them, or it would be more proper to bring them to you, wouldn’t it? But they’re with those girls. We didn’t know anything about the other fellows’ coming till Larry telegraphed us about meeting us and all coming on together in Judd Penrose’s car. We’ve taken a cottage of our own now, since Marcella’s house is full up with girls. You ought to see where we are going to ‘bach’ it, though I see where we don’t do any cooking to speak of!”

“‘Penrose,’” said Betty. “We met some boys by that name on the way up here. I wonder——”

But she did not wonder long. There, with an armful of driftwood, was Archie Penrose, whose face, like Ted’s before, was lit up by the fire as he stooped. A crowd of girls and boys were around the fire and Betty, greeting those she knew and introduced to those she had not met, was soon in the midst of the friends and fun.

“You didn’t expect me to carry out my threat so soon, did you?” grinned Arthur Penrose. “Neither did I; but we’re well met. Will you go sketching with me tomorrow?”

“I’d love to, but Carolyn is my hostess and you’ll have to find out what she’s going to do.”

“From all the plans, I take it that we’ll have a picnic of some sort all the time we’re here, every day.”

Like the Dorrance boys, the two Penroses had settled their parents and Gwen in a summer resort further South. Then came a telegram from their cousin, Judd Penrose, and an invitation for Gwen from Marcella in another urgent telegram, a night letter. Gwen had come by train. The boys waited to be picked up by Judd and Larry with the Dorrances.

Gwen Penrose almost fell into Betty’s arms, such was her enthusiasm at seeing her. “Isn’t this marvellous?” she asked, “and to think that we hadn’t the slightest idea of it when we met before! I did not even remember the name of Judd’s room-mate! I was crazy to come with Marcella when she went to see Carolyn and you and Kathryn; but she wouldn’t let me. She wanted the surprise to be complete, she said.”

“Well, it certainly was—is!” answered Betty. “And now Art can make me a sketch of this lovely place—if he will.”

“Oh, he will all right,” Gwen assured her. “He thinks you’re just about the sweetest thing he’s seen for a long while.”

Betty laughed. “We like scenery—that’s all.”

Lawrence Waite, who was with another small group of girls, Betty did not meet at first; but presently he came quickly over to where she stood talking with one and another, and cordially took her hand. “Hello there, Titania. I saw you by the light of the moon. Any other fairies abroad?”

“It is a night for them, isn’t it?” brightly replied Betty. “But they might be afraid of pirates on this coast, mightn’t they?”

“Not of the Pirate of Penzance,” Larry assured her. “Long ago, in a gloomy cave, by the light of one flickering candle, the queen of the fairies was not afraid of him, was she?”

“Not a bit,” laughed Betty. “She thought he was real nice.”

“Is that all?” began the smiling former “Pirate of Penzance,” but Judd Penrose joined them at this moment and was introduced.

The sorority girls who were visiting Marcella were for the most part older. Marcella, too, had received her high school diploma and was a little inclined to attend an Eastern school instead of continuing in the “home town” university. Two of her visitors were girls from this school. Other girls and boys were from this summer colony. Peggy Pollard was the only girl of Marcia’s high school sorority from Betty’s class, and how she was welcomed by her classmates! “That is all that is necessary to make this summer a success, Peggy—your being here,” warmly said Kathryn Allen.

Visiting, strolling on the beach with one and another, toasting marshmallows, hearing all “the latest” about everybody, preparing and eating the excellent lunch provided—and all on the rocky coast of Maine, made Betty Lee’s cup of happiness full. Chet did not try to monopolize her. Everybody was “jolly” with everybody else and great plans were made for coming days. “Carpe diem,” folks, said Judson Penrose, “or in other words, ‘Gather ye roses while ye may’"—and his eyes were upon “dear old Marcella,” as he said this and suggested a chowder party for the next day and a trip by car to a lake further inland on the following day. Betty whispered to Kathryn that she would have to pinch herself to make sure that it wasn’t a dream.

Like Betty, though in college, Larry Waite would be a senior next year, a senior at Yale. And he had not forgotten that crazy Hallowe’en! Betty’s little experience with candle and mirror still remained unmentioned to the other girls. She sometimes wondered if Larry had ever spoken of it. Otherwise, it was an amusing secret between them—and, of course, a bit romantic, though nothing would ever come of it. Of course not.

Chowder was duly served on the beach at the next beach party. The trip to the beautiful little lake was a second exciting excursion. Not even the mornings were exempt from gala events especially when long trips were planned. Inland they went by car and for water trips the boys secured a motor boat of moderate size which would accommodate all of Marcella’s and Carolyn’s visitors and the boys of their bachelor cottage. It was supposed to be “Welcome Inn,” which sign adorned the doorway; but Ted said that a better name would be “Never At Home” or, if one must make a pun, “S’m’ Other Time Inn.”

But in a few days the girls from the other resort had departed, leaving two recent seniors with their classmate, Marcella, and the two younger girls, Peggy Pollard and Gwendolyn Penrose, who finally spent part of their time at Marcella’s and the rest at Carolyn’s.

Betty enjoyed all the trips, but she still liked the water best, in it to swim, or on it to explore the coast, with its bays and inlets or to go out upon the bounding billows that Chet teased Betty about, as far as it was wise for the boys to take the motor boat.

And this was how it happened that Betty was drawn into one tragic occurrence which might have entirely spoiled the summer’s pleasure for her and brought distress upon some of her friends.