"We'll wait, thanks," Fred responded. "Say, isn't that somebody calling to you?"
Joe did not turn, but he seemed to know that Fred was right.
"It's Carrie Pepper and Mattie Helms," he said hurriedly. "Come on, Albert, we'll have to hurry. You see, Fred, we said we'd take the girls to the carnival, and then we changed our minds. Carrie wants to eat everything she sees and Mattie isn't much better, and we haven't got money enough to take them and have a good time ourselves. Are they coming this way?"
"Sure! And waving for you to stop," Fred reported.
Without another word Joe and Albert hurried off up the beach, carefully refraining from looking over their shoulders.
"Nice unselfish people," remarked Margy sarcastically.
"I think it's pretty mean to invite the girls and then go off and leave them," Jess said mildly.
"What are you going to say?" Polly asked Fred.
"Tell 'em the truth, of course," that brave young man declared. "Carrie ought to hear it once in a while."
He looked so determined that Polly and Jess had hard work not to laugh when, as the red-faced Carrie and the wilted Mattie came up to them and demanded, "What did Joe say? Where was he going?" Fred began to stutter.