"Tell it, if you're sure it won't hurt us," laughed Helen.
"Let's get the coach to have us circle the island when we're out in practice. It's always a little rough off both ends of Bliss Island, and we should get used to rough water before our final home races."
For, before the season was over, the four Ardmore eights would compete, and that race was the one which the three under-classes particularly trained for.
Jennie's suggestion sounded practical to her chums; so there were three already agreed when it was broached to the freshmen eight. The coach thought well of it, too; for there was always a motor boat supposed to be in sight of the shells when they were out at practice.
This was in April, and, in Ardmore's latitude, a very uncertain month April is—a time of showers and smiles, calms and uncertain gales. Nevertheless, so thoroughly were the freshmen eight devoted to practice that it had to be a pretty black looking afternoon, indeed, that kept them from stepping into their boat.
The boatkeeper was a weather-wise old man, who had guarded the Ardmore girls against disaster on the lake for a decade. Being so well used to reading the signs he never let the boats out when he considered the weather threatening in any measure.
One afternoon, when there had been a call passed for the freshmen eight to gather at the boathouse immediately after recitations, Johnnie, as the boatman was called, had been called away from his post. Only a green assistant was there to look after the boats, and he was much too bashful to "look after the girls," as Jennie, giggling, observed.
"I don't see why they don't put blinders on that young man," she said. "Whenever he has to look at one of us girls his freckles light up as though there was an electric bulb behind each individual one."
"Oh, Heavy! Behave!" murmured Helen, yet amused, too, by the bashfulness of the assistant.
"We are a sight, I admit," went on Jennie. "Everything in the shell, girls? Now! up with it. Come on, little Trix," she added to the coxswain. "Don't get your tiller-lines snarled, and bring your 'nose-warmer'"—by which inelegant term she referred to the megaphone which, when they were really trying for speed was strapped to the coxswain's head.