PAUL'S MOTOR BOAT
The days flew by on wings and the girls were surprised to wake one morning to find that they had been at Lighthouse Island over a week.
They had been bathing and boating and swimming till they were tanned a beautiful brown, the color not being confined to their faces, but covering their arms and hands as well.
What with the exercise and Mrs. Danvers’ wonderful cooking, they had gained flesh so fast that they had begun to wonder a little anxiously if they were “bound for the freak show.”
“Why, it’s positively dreadful!” Laura declared one morning, feeling ruefully of her waistline which she was quite certain had expanded at least two inches. “I’ve simply got to stop eating, or something.”
“Stop eating!” echoed Billie, taking up a handful of sand and letting it sift slowly through her fingers. “Well, maybe you can do it, Laura dear, but I certainly can’t—not with Connie’s mother doing the cooking.”
“I don’t intend to try, no matter how fat I get,” declared Vi.
It was right after breakfast, and the girls had jumped into their bathing suits, as they did at almost the same time every morning, and were waiting impatiently for the hour to pass that Mrs. Danvers had insisted must pass before they went in swimming after breakfast.
“Mother said she might come down this morning and go in with us,” said Connie, her eyes fixed dreamily on the horizon. Then suddenly she sat up straight and stared.
“What’s the matter?” asked Billie. “Seeing ghosts or something?”
“No. But look!” Connie clutched at her arm. “Isn’t that a motor boat?”
“That” was a tiny spot that grew bigger as they looked and seemed to be headed in their direction.
“It’s a boat of some sort, I think,” said Vi. “But you can’t tell whether it’s a motor boat or some other kind of a craft.”
“Of course you can,” Laura broke in excitedly. “It’s got to be a motor boat because there aren’t any sails or anything. It is! It is! Oh, girls! could it be——”
“The boys?” finished Billie, shading her eyes with her hand and gazing eagerly out toward the speck that was growing larger every minute. “Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful?”
“But we’re not a bit sure it’s the boys,” Connie reminded her. “Lots of motor boats come here in the summer.”
“Oh, stop being a kill-joy,” Laura commanded, giving her a little shake. “I just feel it in my bones that the boys are in that boat. Where will they land, Connie?”
“At the dock, of course,” Connie answered, in a tone which said very plainly: “You ought to have known that without asking.”
“Well, let’s run around there then,” cried Billie, her cheeks red with excitement. “They won’t know what to do if nobody’s there to meet them.”
As always with Billie, to think a thing was to do it, and before the girls had a chance to say anything she was off, fleet-footed, down the sand in the direction of the dock.
The girls stared for a minute, then Laura started in pursuit.
“Come on,” she cried. “She’s crazy, of course, but we’ve got to follow her, I suppose.”
Billie had almost reached the dock before they caught up with her. Then Laura reached out a hand and jerked her to stop.
“Billie,” she gasped, “be sensible for just a minute, please. Suppose it isn’t the boys? Then we won’t want to be waiting around as though we wanted somebody to speak to us!”
“Well, but I’m sure it is the boys. You said so yourself,” retorted Billie impatiently, her eyes fixed on the mysterious spot dancing and bobbing on the glistening water. “And they certainly won’t know what to do if there isn’t a soul here to meet them.”
“But we don’t want to meet them in our bathing suits,” said Vi, who, with Connie, had just come pantingly up. “It wouldn’t be just proper, would it?”
Billie looked at her doubtfully a moment, then reluctantly shook her head.
“No, I don’t suppose it would,” she admitted, adding with a stamp of her foot. “But I did want to be here to meet them.”
“Well, we can be, if we rush,” broke in Connie. “The boat won’t reach the dock for fifteen or twenty minutes anyway, because it’s still a long way off. We may be able to throw some clothes on and be back by that time.”
“‘Throw’ is right,” Laura said skeptically, but Billie was already racing off again in the direction of the cottage. With a helpless little laugh, the girls followed.
The boys would have declared it could not be done. But the girls proved that it could. They were panting when they reached the house, stopped just long enough to explain to the surprised Mrs. Danvers and then scurried upstairs, and with eager fingers tore off their bathing suits and substituted their ordinary clothes.
“It’s good we didn’t go in bathing and get our hair all wet,” Vi panted, but Laura put a hand over her mouth.
“Stop talking,” she commanded. “You need your breath!”
As a matter of fact, they were pretty much out of the last-named article when they reached the dock again. But the great thing was that they had succeeded in getting there before whoever was in that motor boat made a landing.
“Suppose after all this it isn’t the boys?” panted Laura, and Connie gave her a funny glance.
“Kill-joy,” she jeered, paying her back.
Laura was about to retort, but Billie interrupted with a chuckle.
“Stop fighting, girls,” she commanded, “and tell me something. Is my hair on straight?”
“No, it’s too much over one eye,” replied Connie in the same tone.
Then Vi claimed their attention.
“Look!” she cried. “They are coming around the other side of the dock. Oh, isn’t that a perfectly beautiful boat?”
It was, but the girls were just then too much interested in finding out who was in the boat to pay very much attention to its beauty. The graceful craft swung around toward them, the motor was shut off, and the boat glided easily in to the dock.
The girls were standing a little way back, so as not to appear too curious, and that was the reason why the boys saw them before they saw the newcomers.
There was a whoop from the deck of the motor boat, a shout of, “Say, fellows, look who’s here!” and the next moment three sportily clad young figures leaped out on the dock and made a dash for the girls, leaving the fourth member of their party protesting vigorously.
The fourth member was none other than Paul Martinson, and, being the owner and captain of the handsome motor boat, he had no intention of following the other boys and leaving his craft to wander out to sea.
So he told the boys what he thought of them, which did not do a particle of good since they did not hear a word he said, and remained in the boat while he held on to the dock with one hand.
Meanwhile Chet had hugged his sister and Teddy had hugged his sister and Ferd had declared longingly that he wished he had a sister to hug, it made him feel lonesome, and there was laughter and noise and confusion generally.
It was Connie who reminded them of poor Paul grumbling away all by himself in his boat, and the boys ran penitently over to him while the girls danced after them joyfully.
“Oh, what a splendid boat!”
“Isn’t she a beauty!”
“What good times you must have in her.”
It was really an unusually handsome craft, and it was little wonder that Paul regarded it with pride. He invited the girls on board, and they went into raptures enough over it to satisfy even him.
It was a good fifty feet in length and had a cabin in which one could stand up if one were not very tall. There were bunks running along both sides of the cabin that looked like leather-cushioned divans in the daytime and could be turned into the most comfortable of beds at night.
There was a galley “for’ard,” too, where the boys cooked their rather sketchy meals, and into this the girls poked eagerly curious heads.
“Oh, it’s all just the completest thing I’ve ever seen!” cried Billie, clapping her hands in delight while Paul looked at her happily. “Those cunning curtains at the window and—everything!”
“My mother did that,” Paul admitted sheepishly, as he followed the girls out on the deck. “And I didn’t like to take them down.”
“Well, I should say you wouldn’t take them down!” said Connie indignantly. “The idea! Don’t you dream of it! Why, they are just what make the cabin!”
“But isn’t this some deck! Did your mother do this too, Paul?” asked Laura, her eyes traveling admiringly from the pretty wicker lounging chairs to the gayly striped awning and brilliant deck rail that shown like gold in the dazzling sun. “Why, Paul, I never knew a motor boat could be so pretty and comfy.”
“Say, but you ought to see her go!” put in Chet eagerly. “She’s as fast a little boat as she is pretty. Oh, she’s great!”
“Yes, it almost makes me wish I had done some studying at school,” said Ferd Stowing, rubbing his head ruefully. “Maybe if I had my dad would have given me an aeroplane or something.”
After they had fastened the boat securely to the dock so that there was no danger of its floating off they turned reluctantly away from the dock and started off toward the Danvers’ cottage.
Then the girls tried to tell the boys all that had happened since they had last met and the boys tried to do the same, the result being hopeless confusion and perfect happiness.
“Say, make believe that beach doesn’t look good!” exclaimed Teddy to Billie, for they had fallen a little behind the rest. “And the good old ocean—say, what a day for a swim!”
“That’s just what we were going to do when we saw you coming,” Billie confided, thinking how exceedingly handsome he looked in his white trousers and dark coat. Then she told him of the wild scramble they had had to get dressed, and she looked so pretty in the telling of it that he did not hear much of what she was saying to him for looking at her.
“But what made you so sure it was us?” asked Teddy ungrammatically.
Billie chuckled and gave a little skip of pure happiness.
“Laura said she felt it in her bones,” she said.