“That’s navy blue you’ve got on—not maroon,” said Chess soberly. “Do you suppose I am color-blind?”
“Smarty!”
“Now, children, this is too serious a matter to quarrel over,” admonished Ruth, but smiling because her chum showed, after all, interest enough in the young man to be “scrappy.” “What do you suppose we have seen, Chess?”
“I’d like to know first of all how you came here without a boat?”
“My goodness, yes!” gasped Helen. “I’d almost forgotten about Wonota and Totantora.”
Ruth shook her head. “I am not likely to forget that,” she said.
She explained to the young man as they got into the launch and he pushed out from the shore about the difficulty that had arisen over the Indians. He was naturally deeply interested in Ruth’s trouble and in the fate of the Indians. But on top of that Helen eagerly told about the speedy launch, the yellow lady, and their suspicions regarding what was going on at the island that they had nicknamed the Kingdom of Pipes.
“I tell you what,” Chess said, quite as eagerly as Helen, “I was coming over to take you all for a sail on the river to-night. Let’s get Tom and just us four keep watch on that island. I believe there is something going on there that ought to be looked into.”
“I—I don’t know that it is our business to look into it,” suggested Ruth, doubtfully.
But for once Helen agreed with Chess, and against Ruth’s better judgment it was determined to come back to this locality after dinner and lurk about the mysterious island in the Copley launch.