CAUGHT IN A STAMPEDE
"Good-bye, Madge, dear!" sighed Eleanor mournfully.
"Say 'au revoir,' but not 'good-bye,' sweet Coz," sang Madge lightly.
She was strapping her school satchel across her back like a knapsack. The girls were attired in their shortest, darkest gowns, and ready for the road.
Miss Jenny Ann hovered near, her face very white and her eyes swollen. "I feel I am very wrong in letting you girls attempt it alone," she protested. "To think that I should have been overtaken with an attack of influenza just as we were about to cross the island is too awful! Don't you think you had better wait until I am well enough to go with you?"
Madge shook her bronze head firmly; Phil's black head followed suit.
"My dear Miss Jenny Ann," protested Madge, "the men Phil saw may have come onto this island simply to stay only a day or so. Unless we go in search of them at once, they may escape us altogether."
"Don't let anybody worry about us," Phil urged. "Madge and I will be as right as right can be. Suppose we find the island so large that we can not get to the other side and back in one day, what's the difference? We will hang our hammock in a tree and sleep like the birds of the air."
With a solemn face, that she tried to make smiling, Eleanor extracted a pale blue ribbon from her pocket and tied it around Madge's arm.
Lillian, with set lips, performed the same service for Phil, except that her ribbon was red.