"I was beginning to wonder what had detained you, when I was delighted to see the carriage coming around the bend of the road. You are just in time to go to your rooms and 'freshen up' a bit before dinner, and— Why, Arabella Correyville! What does this mean?"
A drenched and bedraggled figure was mounting the steps. Her hair, and garments were dripping, she had lost her goggles, and without them her eyes had a frightened stare.
"I didn't mean to look like this," she said, "but I lost the key to my room. I'd locked the door when I went out, and I wanted to study some before dinner. I climbed up onto the edge of that hogshead that the workmen had left right beside the trellis that runs up by my window. I meant to get in at my window, but I fell and got into a hogshead of dirty water. 'Twasn't very pleasant," she drawled.
One might have thought, from the manner in which she said it that most people would have enjoyed the "ducking"!
Mrs. Marvin looked discouraged. This was the girl that could not get into a scrape, now that she had no one to drag her in!
"Miss Fenler, will you assist Arabella in making herself presentable before six? It is after five-thirty now."
Miss Fenler looked anything but pleased, but she dared not refuse. Arabella seemed quieter than ever when she came down the stairway, her wet garments exchanged for dry ones, and her straight hair primly braided, thanks to Miss Fenler.
Doubtless she had not recovered from her surprise when she found herself in the hogshead. It always required time for Arabella to recover from any new idea, or unusual happening.
The other girls were giving the four who had just returned a gay welcome, and Dorothy slipped her arm around Betty Chase, and told her the fine news that during the summer they were both to be at Foam Ridge.
"Oh, Dorothy!" cried Betty, her dark eyes shining, "I was delighted when mother wrote that we were going there, just because I so love to be at the shore, and now to think that you and Nancy are to spend the summer there,—oh, it is such a dear surprise."