The freckled girl squealed—no other word could exactly express the startled sound she made when Beth seized her. Then she attempted to turn around and face her rescuer, as the latter dragged her down and away from the rail.
“What are you doing? Stop it!” sputtered the tall girl. “Goodness! how strong you are! Do let me be!”
“I won’t!” cried the excited Beth. “I won’t! You sha’n’t do such a dreadful thing! I’ll shout for help!”
“Oh! don’t do that,” begged the other girl. “They’ll do something awful to me.”
“Then promise you won’t do that——”
“What?”
“It would be dreadful——”
“What would be dreadful?” repeated the strange girl, in some heat. “They’d have got the boat back again. I wasn’t going to steal it.”
“Steal it?” murmured Beth, startled and confused.
“Yes. I’d have left it tied along shore there. No harm would have come to it.”