She pressed Larry’s hand in farewell. She kissed her mother, her father, and “all the tribe,” as Ella called the family. The girls waved their handkerchiefs from the shore.
Larry did not wait as the Water Wagtail pulled out into the stream. It was his tall form, however, striding up the dock when the steamboat was really under way that Beth last saw.
CHAPTER VI
AN ADVENTURE IN MIDSTREAM
Beth had left the door of her stateroom wide open. When she went into the passage out of which it opened, she saw a girl looking in at the flowers, admiringly.
She was a merry-eyed girl, with short, fine, brown hair that had been blown about her face by the fresh, river breeze. This fact made her seem a little untidy; but she had a winning smile, was well dressed, and Beth found herself interested in the stranger even before the merry one spoke.
“How jolly!” she cried. “You certainly must have heaps and heaps of friends.”
“Why so?” asked Beth, demurely.
“Because they’ve just about filled your room with flowers. Or were they so glad to see you go that they over-speeded the parting guest?” added the girl, roguishly.
Beth laughed as she went by the other into the room and seized a bunch of roses. “Here,” she said, thrusting the flowers into the strange girl’s hands. “I must divide with somebody. And my friends were not speeding the parting guest. I am going to school.”
“Bless us! so am I,” said the other, burying her rather retroussé nose in the fragrant blossoms. “But they didn’t waste any lovely flowers on poor little Molly—nay, nay, Pauline!”