The weather was warm, it being early in July, soon after the Fourth, and a more delightful time of year would be hard to find during which to spend a vacation in the woods on the shore of Lake Sagatook.

“May we go down and paddle in the water?” asked Russ of his mother, after he and the other little Bunkers had wandered out to the barn and had seen Zip, the dog, and Muffin, the cat.  “Mayn’t we go down and wade in the lake?”

“Do you think it will be safe?” asked Mrs. Bunker of her husband.

“Well, I’ll go down there and have a look,” he said.  “If we are to stay here for a month or so the children will have to get used to playing near the water.  If it’s safe we’ll feel we won’t have to be with them all the while.”

“I think it will be safe if they keep near the shore out on the little point of land that extends into the lake,” said Grandma Bell.  “There is a sandy beach there, and the water is not deep.  Let the children play there.  You can see them from the house; so, if we look out every now and then, we’ll be sure they are all right.”

“Very well,” said Daddy Bunker.  “We’ll first have a look at the lake.”

“Oh, goody!” cried Russ.

“Now we can have a lot of fun and sail boats!” added Laddie.  “We can have a whole lot of fun.”

“I’ll take my doll down and give her a bath,” said Rose.

“Oh, won’t water spoil your doll, my dear?” asked Grandma Bell.

“I don’t mean my big one, that the lady took for her baby,” explained the little girl.  “I mean my small rubber doll.”

“Oh!  Well, I guess it will be all right to bathe her in the lake,” said Grandma Bell with a laugh.

Daddy Bunker found that the sandy point, which Grandma Bell told about, was a very nice and safe place for the children to play.  So, dressed in their old clothes which water and sand would not soil, they all trooped down to Lake Sagatook, and there, in the shade of the big woods, they began to have fun.

Russ and Laddie made little boats and set them adrift in the blue water.  Rose and Vi played with their dolls, for they had each brought two or three of them.  Mun Bun and Margy dug in the sand with sticks which they picked up on the shore of the lake.

“It’s almost like the seashore,” said Rose, when she came back from having given her rubber doll a dip in the lake, “only the water doesn’t taste salty like when you cry tears.”

“I like it here,” said Vi.  “I wish we could stay always.”

The children were having lots of fun when, in the midst of their play, they heard the sound of water being splashed and the noise made by the oars of a boat.  Looking up, they saw a rowboat not far from shore, and in it sat a big man.

And, at the sight of this man, Russ dropped the chip he was floating about, pretending it was a submarine, and, in a whisper, said: 

“Hi, Laddie! do you see his hair?”