“What are you making, Betsey?” asked Tom, one hot July day.

“A cottage,” said Betsey.

“Whew! There’s nothing small about you! What do you want of a cottage when you’ve got a new doll-house?”

“Mrs. Delight has to have a summer home, hasn’t she?” answered Betsey with dignity. “O Tom, dear! Could I borrow your train of cars? The Delights want to go to the seashore.”

“You can have it. I don’t want it any more.”

“O thank you, Tom. I don’t suppose you’d want to lend that little suit-case—that Uncle John gave you full of candy, would you?”

“That,” said Tom, solemnly making a great bow, “you may have, too. What do I want of a doll’s suit-case?”

“You’re an old dear,” said Betsey affectionately. “Now let me think what else I need to make before the families can start for the beach.” She cut a large window in her pasteboard cottage as she spoke.

“How many families are going?” inquired Tom politely.

“Two,” said Betsey, carefully marking her window-sashes. “Mr. and Mrs. Delight, and Dinah and Dumpling, for one family, and Mr. and Mrs. Darling for the other. Try to think, Tom, what I ought to make.”

“Are your families going swimming?” asked Tom.

“O yes, indeed, every day.”

“Then I suggest that you make bathing-suits.”

“Of course! How stupid of me! Here I am, planning too much about trains and cottages, and not at all about clothes!”

And Tom went down-stairs, just as Mr. Betts, the carpenter, finished his cottage, and changed into Madame Bettina, the French dressmaker.

“O Madame Bettina!” said Mrs. Delight all out of breath. “We want some bathing-suits made. We’re going to the seashore!”

“That is ver’ good,” said Betsey, with Madame Bettina’s French accent (just as Mother’s dressmaker talked). “Will you have Alice-blue suits trimmed with white braid, with charming bath caps to match?”

“That sounds very pretty,” agreed Mrs. Delight. “My sister doesn’t know yet that she’s going, so hers is a great surprise. Make hers blue and mine black, so we can tell them apart, and Dinah must have one too.”

“I shall send them tonight, surely,” said Madame Bettina, getting to work in good earnest, for it is not every dressmaker that can make five bathing-suits in one day. She cut here and snipped there, and ran her machine at a great rate.

“Betsey!” called Mother above all the noise. “Come to the head of the stairs a minute.”

Betsey stopped her noise obediently and opened the door.

“Tom and I are going to Boston at ten o’clock. Norah will take care of you. And you can ask Mary to come over to play this afternoon, if you want to.”

“I don’t need Mary, Mother!” cried Betsey laughing. “You see with Mrs. Delight’s company I have my hands full already.”

“Very well,” said Mother laughing too. “Now what do you want me to bring you? I’m going to take your gold thimble in to be straightened where the chair rocked on it.” She held up the tiny blue box.

“O Mother dear! If you’ll only take the thimble in something else, and give me that thimble box, you don’t have to bring me one thing.”

“What do you want it for?” asked Mother in a puzzled tone.

“A camera. It’s just the size. I’ll cover it with black oilcloth and make a little, black carrying case just to fit, and Mrs. Delight can take it to the beach.”

“Here is your camera, then,” laughed Mother, tossing it up the stairs into Betsey’s two hands.

“Good-bye, Mother,” sang Betsey, bustling back into the playroom. “Ding-ling! Hello! Give me three-five-one, please.” (This in Mr. Delight’s pleasant deep voice.)

“Hello, Mr. Betts. Can you make me a camera to take with me to the beach?”

“I can, sir. I will send it up with the suit-case, and bag, and fish-pole.” And Mr. Betts hastily got out his glue and heavy paper and thin sticks of wood, and soon finished a gentleman’s hand-bag, lettered “J. D.” (for John Darling), a tiny black camera, and a long, slender fish-pole.

“There!” said Betsey to nobody in particular. “Here is where the beach will be.” (Setting up the new cottage.) “Here is the station.” (Setting up the train of cars.) “And here are all the new things to be delivered.”

She packed them into a tiny express cart drawn by a brown horse, took a last look at the room to see that everything was ready, and went down to dinner.

“Norah,” she said, settling herself at the table all alone in the big dining-room, “I’m going to be very busy all the afternoon.”

“Are ye, me darlint!” said Norah with a smile. “And do you want anything of me?”

Betsey hesitated. “No, I guess not—unless you could find me a big shingle. Do you think you could?”

“A big shingle! I’m thinking there’s a cellar full! I’ll give ye two for a kiss!”

But as it turned out, Betsey gave two kisses to kind Norah for one shingle, and hurried back to her playroom, calling back over her shoulder, “I want the shingle for a wharf!”

“A wharf,” chuckled Norah to herself. “Bless the dear child! She has a regular little town up in her room, with her houses, and her cars, and her seashores!”

Betsey stopped in her mother’s room and looked hard at the washstand. “Yes, I’ll be very careful,” she said to nobody in particular, and lifted the pitcher out, and poured the white pond-lily bowl nearly full of water. “It’s lovely and cold!” she giggled. “How Mr. Delight will yell!”

Carefully she lifted the basin, and slowly she walked to the back hall. “However am I going to open the door?” puzzled Betsey. But she got no farther, for one of her wrists let down suddenly, and splash! went a great shower of water over the floor, and began running in all directions.

“I should have called Norah,” said Betsey. But she did not sit down and watch the water creep down-stairs. She seized a dry mop, and dried the floor very deftly.

“I’m glad I didn’t break the bowl,” she thought as she squeezed the dry mop (which was now quite a wet one) out of the window. “It’s lucky the back hall isn’t carpeted.” And she started out again.

This time she reached the playroom safely, set the “ocean” on the table by the beach, and knelt down before the big house to help Mrs. Delight ring her shiny telephone.

“Hello, Prudence. What do you say if we go to the seashore?”

“Why, you take my breath away! John and I haven’t any bathing-suits.”

“But suppose William and I see to that?”

“Well, we haven’t hired a cottage.”

“But suppose we see to that, too?”

“Then we’ll go! Shall we meet you at the station?”

“Meet us at ten, sharp!”

With these words Betsey took Mrs. Delight from the telephone, put on her prettiest white suit and her hat trimmed with the blue-jay feather that she had found in the yard. She tied a wide blue ribbon to Dumpling’s collar, put on Mr. Delight’s gray derby, and packed the suit-case neatly. Then she hustled the whole crowd to the station, taking three dolls in one hand and two dolls and a dog in the other. As the little ladies were kissing each other delightedly, Betsey gave a shrill whistle and rushed the big, noisy engine swiftly along the track, and brought it slowly to a standstill. Then she gave several hard puffs (the way an engine does, you know).

“Woof! Woof!” said Dumpling.

“O here’s a dog,” said the porter, catching hold of Dumpling’s blue ribbon. “No dogs allowed in de Pullman, sah.”

“Dis yeah dog is!” said Dinah, forgetting herself.

“No, miss; all dogs hab to ride in de baggage car.”

“My dear Edith,” said Mr. Delight calmly, “I’ll go and see my friend, the President of the Railroad, and see what can be done.”

“De train will go off and leave you, sah!” cried the distressed porter.

“No it won’t, William!” shouted Mr. Darling. “I’m going to stand right here with my bag, directly on the track, and the engineer won’t dare to run over me.” And Betsey stood Mr. Darling up, right under the nose of the steaming engine.

Soon Mr. Delight came striding back. “It’s all right,” he called. “The President’s Special will be hitched on directly. Here it comes down the track now.”

Betsey had the biggest passenger car behind her all the time. In fact it was the only car all the little people could get into all at once, and now she pushed it down the track at a great rate and bumped it into the train with a bang quite like a real passenger car.

“It is a shame that it will be too late to bathe when we get there,” said Mrs. Delight, as Betsey arranged them all in the tiny green velvet seats.

“It won’t,” corrected Mr. Darling. “Eleven o’clock is the fashionable hour to bathe. The minute I get there I shall put on my bathing-suit. And, Dinah, I shall get enough fish for dinner off the wharf before I touch the water.”

“Better not promise, Mr. John. What if de fishes don’t bite?”

“I promise,” said Mr. Darling more firmly, “that I won’t go into the water until I get enough fish for dinner.”

Here Betsey slowed up the train, and called out in a conductor’s loud voice, “Beachwood! Beachwood!”

“Here we are,” cried Mr. Delight. “What a lovely cottage!”

But Betsey couldn’t wait for them all to exclaim over the new cottage, having four grown-up people to dress in new bathing-suits, so she began directly with Mr. Delight. She put on his cunning blue bath-robe over his bathing-suit and tied the tiny cord carefully, because Mr. Delight was cold-blooded, like Father. Mrs. Delight had a round rubber cap (not really rubber, though), and Betsey tied Mrs. Darling’s hair up in a white silk bandana with a funny knot in front, like Cousin Margaret’s. As for Mr. Darling, he had a scarlet suit, just the color of a boiled lobster. And Betsey slung the fish-pole over his shoulder, and gave the new camera to Mrs. Darling.

“Remember de fish, Mister John,” called Dinah. “Nebber tech de water twell you catches enough fo’ dinner!”

“I’ll bring you the fish, sure!” promised Mr. Darling.

“Here’s the wharf,” said Betsey, putting the big shingle across the bowl. “Mr. Darling can fish while the others try the water.”

“You know the best way to go in, Prudence, I suppose?” said Betsey for Mrs. Delight, settling herself before the table that held the ocean.

“Yes, you wet your forehead first, like this,” said Mrs. Darling, “and then you just plunge in all over like this! O-o-eee!” And Betsey laughed and sputtered just as everyone does at the seashore, giving a monstrous shout for Mr. Delight when he went in.

“Don’t stir up the water so much down there!” called Mr. Darling from the wharf. “Scared away a big cod, then.”

“I wonder if I could make Mr. Delight swim,” thought Betsey. She bent out his tiny arms and lowered him into the water and tried to make him strike out. But she forgot that she had very carelessly left Mrs. Darling standing in the water, and Mr. Delight was so very awkward and made such a huge wave, that the water in the small ocean struck her full in the face and over she went.

“O her hair! her hair!” cried Betsey in distress, plunging her hand in after the poor little lady. She hastily dried her in a big towel, and took off the little silk cap to see what damage was done. “It isn’t so bad,” she decided, feeling of the yellow braid. “The silk made very good rubber. Now Mr. Darling can go in.”

And she plunged him in all over. The other dolls were greatly surprised. “We didn’t know you had caught a fish,” they said.

“Go and look in my fish basket,” said Mr. Darling.

And when they looked in the basket they found two tiny paper blue-fish that Betsey had secretly cut out and hidden there.

“We must take them to Dinah to cook. I am starved,” said Mrs. Delight, climbing out.

Betsey had just about time enough to get the family dry and dressed when Dinah called them to dinner. “It will be all right if Mrs. Darling’s hair is down to dry,” decided Betsey. “Cousin Margaret has to dry hers.” And she set them around the table.

“I didn’t know blue-fish grew here,” said Mrs. Delight.

“Pshaw! Don’t let him fool you, honey,” said Dinah scornfully. “I seed him out on de wharf wid de fish man when you-all was busy in de water.”

“He didn’t catch them at all, then,” said Mrs. Delight.

“No,” said Mr. Darling. “But you know I said I’d get the fish; I didn’t promise to catch them.”

And Betsey had to laugh herself to see them laugh. And as she laughed she heard a familiar voice call, “Betsey, dear!”

“Why, mother can’t be home,” she cried.

But she opened the door and it surely was Mother who stood on the landing with her arms out ready for her busy little daughter.

“You may come down and look in my bag,” she said, kissing Betsey.

And when the black bag was opened, Betsey found two tiny boxes for her.

“I know when they’re tiny, they are for Mrs. Delight,” she giggled, as she unwrapped the tissue papers. Inside she found a beautiful little gilt cuckoo-clock with a tiny bird who really said “cuckoo” when you pulled a cord,—and two smooth, silver-framed mirrors.

“Those mirrors,” said Betsey, almost too pleased to speak, “mean that Mrs. Delight will have to have a new bureau.”

But it really turned out to mean a great deal more,—which is another story!