"Well, I'd not be mean enough to skin out like that," he cried as he hurried over the hard, damp sands. He thought it very mean to elude paying the little bet, and as he ran, he told himself that he would have promptly paid the marbles if he had owed them to Jack, which was true.
Jack was mischievous, but he would never have left a little girl in the plight in which Max, with all his boasting, had left Gwen.
And although Max Deland searched in every place where Jack was likely to be, he did not find him.
"I'll not hunt for him!" he cried at last, "but I'll make him pay when I catch him!"
The voice was shrill and piping.
"Hello! Where are you?" Max shouted in reply, and the trim waitress from her position on the ledge, cried back;
"It's not where I am, but where you are that's worrying your mother. You're the first boy I ever saw that had to be called to dinner. Come in!"
She turned and ran into the house, while Max rushed toward the big dining-room.
He thought of Gwen during dinner, but he felt no fear for her safety. He believed that she had soon become tired of floating in the shallow water, had sprung from the leaky tub, and for hours had been playing with her friends.