Tom Curtis had brought with him four or five young men from the camp. Flora Harris, looking utterly bored, a faint smile of cynical amusement on her face, accompanied by her cousin, Alice Paine, had crossed the bay in a steam launch with Jimmie Lawton. Never before had the houseboat held so many visitors, and the young hostesses did all in their power to entertain their guests.
"We have had a delightful afternoon," smiled Alice Paine as, later, the two young women declared that they must go back to Old Point. "I think the 'Merry Maid' is lovely, don't you, Flora?"
"The boat? Oh, yes," drawled Flora. Then with a touch of malice she added, "You told me you made your houseboat from an old canal boat, didn't you, Miss Morton?"
"Yes," returned the little captain briefly; then, as though unconscious of any malice aforethought on the part of the other girl, she continued a laughing conversation with Tom Curtis and Alfred Thornton.
"I should have guessed it," commented Flora Harris, shrugging her shoulders. She frowned as she noted that Alfred Thornton appeared to be enjoying himself immensely. Furthermore, no one had paid the slightest attention to her malicious little thrust. Madge had answered her without seeming to realize the insult her words contained.
Madge had fully realized, however, the hidden insolence of Flora Harris's reply, but she would have died rather than allow the other girl to know it.
"Did you say I didn't dare, Tom?" she exclaimed in answer to a laughing remark on the part of the young man. "I don't see anything very daring about your proposal. O Phil!" she turned to Phyllis, "Tom and Mr. Thornton dare us to row against them in the camp regatta next week. Will you do it?"
"Of course," agreed Phyllis, who would have cheerfully acquiesced to almost anything Madge saw fit to propose. "We are likely to come in last, but never mind a little thing like that. We are out of practice though. I wonder if we can't persuade a number of other girls to enter the race too?"
Flora Harris glanced disdainfully at Madge and Phyllis. She and Alice had lived near salt water all their lives, and had been taught to row by experts. It was too absurd to think of these two country girls rowing against them! As for entering a racing contest with boys from the camp—surely they were joking! But if they meant it seriously, she and Alice were ready for them.