Part 24 (2/2)

”You were both very watchful of Harry,” said Mrs. Slater. ”Your mother should be proud of you children.”

”There's my mother now,” said Bunny, pointing to Mrs. Brown, who had come down with a number of other women.

Thus it was that Bunny, Sue and the new boy became acquainted and Mrs.

Slater also formed a friends.h.i.+p for Mrs. Brown. Soon the excitement had pa.s.sed and the children were in bathing again, while their mothers either bathed, too, or sat on the beach and talked. Bunny and Sue liked Harry, and you may be sure the new boy was very thankful to Bunny Brown for pulling him up out of the water.

”Do they have bigger waves in the ocean than the one that knocked me down?” asked Harry, when the three children were once more having a good time in the bathing pool.

”Oh, I guess they do!” cried Sue. ”He should see some of the big waves, shouldn't he, Bunny?”

”Well, I'd like to see 'em,” said Harry, with a laugh. ”But I wouldn't want to be knocked down by 'em--not if they were bigger than the wave that hit me.”

”The waves in the ocean are ever so much bigger,” went on Bunny. ”And in a storm they're twice as big.”

”We were in a storm coming here,” explained Sue. ”We were on a boat and it rocked like anything, didn't it, Bunny?”

”Yes, it rocked a lot,” he agreed. ”Come on,” he called to his sister.

”Let's go over and dig clams.”

”Where can you dig clams?” asked Harry eagerly. Anything about the seash.o.r.e interested him, as it was his first summer at the beach.

”They get hard clams away out in the cove,” explained Bunny. ”But soft clams grow over there where the tide is out.”

”Clams don't grow,” declared Sue. ”They aren't like apples.”

”Yes, clams do grow,” declared Bunny. ”Else how could a little clam get to be a big one. They grow over there, in that place where there isn't any water,” went on Bunny. ”And when the tide is out we dig for 'em.”

”I was up on my grandpa's farm once, and I helped dig for potatoes in the ground,” said Harry. ”But I never dug for clams. I'd like to.”

”We'll show you how,” offered Bunny. ”Mother lets us dig soft clams, and she makes chowder of 'em. Come on, we'll go over and dig clams.”

Harry was very glad of this chance for fun, and when Mrs. Brown had said her two children might go, and when Mrs. Slater had also consented to let her boy accompany his two new playmates, they set off.

”There isn't any water on the flats when the tide is out,” said Mrs.

Brown. ”Bunny and Sue often go there to dig clams, and we can see them from here.”

Soft clams are not like hard clams. The sh.e.l.l is a sort of bluish black and is quite thin, so it is easily crushed. The soft clam is long and thin, instead of being almost round, like a hard clam.

A soft clam lives down in the mud or sand under water. Within his sh.e.l.l the soft clam has a long tube, which seems as if made of rubber, for it can be stretched out greatly, or made so small as to fit inside the sh.e.l.l.

When the tide covered the low flats at one part of Christmas Tree Cove the soft clams could not be found. But when the tide went out it left bare a large s.p.a.ce of sand and sticky mud, or muck. Then was the time to dig soft clams.

Bunny and Sue knew how to do it. They used a little shovel, though a regular clammer uses a short-handled hoe, digging the wet earth away much as a farmer digs away the earth from a hill of potatoes. Down under the surface the clams are found.

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