“But they are only the huts from along shore——”
Her statement was interrupted by a terrific shock the hotel suffered as a good-sized cottage—one of the nearest of the summer colony—smashed against the hotel, rebounded, and drifted away down stream.
The two women and the two girls were flung together in a clinging group for half a minute. Then Miss Martha Miggs tore herself away. “Let go of me, you impudent young minxes!” she cried. “Are you trying to rob me again?”
“Oh! the horrid thing!” gasped Helen; but Ruth kept her lips closed.
She knew anything they could say would make a bad matter worse. Already the hotel proprietor’s wife was looking at them very doubtfully.
It had stopped raining, but the damp wind swept into the open door and chilled the girls in their thin frocks. Mrs. Holloway saw this and remembered that she had to answer to Mrs. Parsons for her guests’ well being.
“Come back into this room,” she commanded, and led Miss Miggs first by the arm into an unlighted parlor. The windows looked up the river, and as the quartette reached the middle of the room, the unhappy school teacher emitted another shriek and pointed out of the nearest unshaded window.
“What is the matter with you now, Martha Miggs?” demanded Mrs. Holloway, in some exasperation. “If I had known you were in such an hysterical, nervous state, I would not have invited you down here—and sent your ticket and all—I assure you. I never saw such a person for startling one.”
“And lots of good the ticket did—with these girls stealing it from me,” snapped Miss Miggs. “But look at that house next to yours. There! see it heave? And there’s a lighted lamp in that room.”
Everybody saw the peril which the school teacher had observed. A lamp stood on the center table in the parlor of the house next. This house was set on a lower foundation than the hotel and the rising river, surging about it, had begun to loosen it.