on her part, however, to pay much heed to it; and they all four went off pleasantly together.
"Now, what shall we do?" said Lily. "You shall choose, 'cause you're the newest come. There's the beach, and there's the rocks and the river and the spring and the ditch and the breakwater, – lots of places to go, and lots of things to do."
"What is the breakwater?" asked Mamie, for whom the name had a great attraction.
"There it is, over there," answered Lily, pointing to where a long, narrow pier jutted out into the sea, the central part broken and ruined, the heavy stones of which it had been built lying in a confused mass, some on one side, some on the other. Useless as a pier, the only purpose it now served was that which its name denoted, to break the force of the waves as they rolled in on the bathing beach, save that it was also a fine, though not always a very safe spot from which to watch the breakers.
"Mamma never allows me to go there alone," added Lily; "and she will not let me go even with some one to take care of me, if the waves are very high; but they are not high to-day, so Nora will take us."
"Let's go there, then," said Mamie; and the others assented.
But just then Mrs. Stone's voice was heard calling to Mamie from the piazza they had left.
"Mamie," she said, "I do not wish you to go near that breakwater, my darling."
Mamie ran back a few steps and then stood still, where all she said reached both her mother and the children.
"Now," she said, in her most obstinate tones, "that's too bad, and I'm just going. We're all going, and Lily's nurse is going to take care of us."
"No," said her mamma, far more decidedly than she was accustomed to speak to Mamie, "I cannot allow it. I am afraid for you to go there."
Lily came forward as Mamie stood fuming and pouting. "Mrs. Stone," she said respectfully, "mamma thinks it is safe when the waves are so low as they are to-day, and she lets me go quite often with Tom or Nora, and sometimes she takes me herself. Nora will take good care of us all."
"No, dear," said Mrs. Stone, who was rather a nervous, anxious mother; "I should not know one moment's peace till Mamie came back. I really cannot let her go. I think it a very unsafe place for children to play. Why cannot you amuse yourselves on the beach?"
Now, having made up their minds to go to the breakwater, this proposal did not suit any of the children; but probably Belle and Lily would have submitted to the change of plan without murmuring, if Mamie had done so.
But Mamie was the last to think of this; her mother's words and her mother's wishes had little weight with the spoiled child when they interfered with her own pleasure; and she shocked both Lily and Belle by declaring passionately that she would go to the breakwater, and she was "not going to stay away for such old nonsense as that."
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