“Where is it? What was it?” growled a masculine voice. “Are you really hurt, Mabel? You are making so much fuss that I can’t tell.”
Mabel had dropped back in a chair. She was white with fear and trembling violently.
“It is in my lap,” she moaned. “It may explode any moment—do take it away!”
The owner of the yacht, Roy Dennis, turned a small electric flashlight full on his two girl guests. There, in Mabel’s lap, was surely a round, globular-shaped object that had either dropped from the sky or had been thrown at them by an unknown hand. Roy had really no desire to pick it up without seeing it more clearly.
The other girl was less timid. She reached over and took hold of Madge’s ball. Then she laughed aloud. Oddly enough, her laugh was repeated out on the water.
“Why, it’s only a rubber ball!” she asserted. Ethel Swann, who was one of the old-time cottagers at Cape May, ran to the side of the boat. “See!” she exclaimed, “over there are some boys swimming. I suppose they threw the ball on board just to frighten us. They certainly were successful.” She hurled Madge’s ball back over the water, but Roy Dennis’s small yacht had gone some distance from the group of mischievous mermaids and he did not turn back. “If I find out who did that trick, I surely will get even with them,” muttered Roy. “I don’t like to be made a fool of.”
“Don’t tell Jenny Ann, please, girls,” begged Madge, as the four girls clambered aboard the “Merry Maid.” “It was a very silly trick that I played. I should hate to have the cottagers at the Cape hear of it. I don’t suppose I shall ever grow up.”
“Girls, whatever made you stay in the water so long?” demanded Miss Jenny Ann, coming into the girls’ stateroom with a big pitcher of hot chocolate and a plate of cakes. “I have been uneasy about you. You have been in the water for half an hour. That’s too long for a first swim. Poor Tania is fast asleep. The child is utterly worn out with so much excitement. Think of never having been out of a crowded city in her life, and then seeing this wonderful Cape May! Tania wanted to stay up to wish you good night. I left her staring out of the cabin window at the stars when I went into our kitchen to make the chocolate. When I came back she was asleep.”
“Dear Jenny Ann,” said Madge penitently, pulling their chaperon down on the berth beside her, while Lillian poured the chocolate, “it was my fault we were late. The bad things are always my fault. But we are going to have a perfectly glorious time this summer, aren’t we? Just think, next year Phil and I shall be nineteen and nearly old ladies.”
“I wonder if anything special is going to happen to us this holiday?” pondered Phil, crunching away on her third cake.