“You’ll have to pay for that, children,” Mabel Schiff cried.
“We know all that!” Bess returned smartly. “And our folks are quite as well able to pay for the old thing as Linda’s father.”
“Oh, hush, Bess!” begged Nan, sotto voce. This sort of talk did sound so common!
“I don’t care! I’m sick of hearing about Linda’s riches,” Bess rejoined.
“I suppose you girls think you saved yourselves?” the big girl went on.
“No; we did not,” Nan said, with seriousness. “Walter Mason saved us. We would have drowned had it not been for Walter.”
“Oh! of course it was his boat——”
“It was Walter himself who did it all,” Nan went on, enthusiastically. “He is as brave as he can be.” She then related the whole incident, just as it had taken place. The girls listened attentively at last, for the story of the squall and the boating accident that followed it, with the details of the rescue, lost nothing in Nan’s telling.
“Great! great!” shouted Laura Polk, when Nan finished. “You ought to be class historian, Nancy Sherwood.”
“But how about Linda?” suggested another girl, slily. “She is some historian, too, isn’t she?”