The appeal was one that Sally could scarcely have resisted, even had she not herself yearned for the same thing. “It—it would be fine!” she acknowledged, shyly. “I’m—I’m awfully glad—if you want to.”
They drifted about idly a while longer, discussing a trip for the next morning, in which Sally proposed to show her new friend the deserted mill, up Cranberry Creek. And Doris announced that she was going to learn to row, so that the whole burden of that task might not fall on Sally.
“But now I must go in,” she ended. “It’s growing dark and Mother will worry. But you be here in the morning at half-past nine with your boat, if we’d better not take the canoe on account of Genevieve, and we’ll have a jolly day.”
Not once during all this time, had there been the least reference to the mysterious hint of Sally’s during the earlier afternoon. But this was not at all because Doris had forgotten it. She was, to tell the truth, even more curious about it than ever. Her vivid imagination had been busy with it ever since, weaving all sorts of strange and fantastic fancies about the suggestion. Did the river have a mystery? What could its nature be, and how had Sally discovered it? Did any one else know? The deepening shadows on the farther shore added the last touch to her busy speculations. They suggested possibilities of every hue and kind. But not for worlds would she have had Sally guess how ardently she longed for its revelation. Sally should tell her in good time, or not at all, if she were so inclined: never because she (Doris) had asked to be admitted to this precious secret.
They beached the canoe, still talking busily about the morrow’s plans, and together hauled it up in the sea-grass and turned it bottom upward. And then Sally prepared to take her departure. But after she had said good-bye, she still lingered uncertainly, as if she had something else on her mind. It was only when she had turned to walk away across the beach, that she suddenly wheeled and ran up to Doris once more.
“I—I want to tell you something,” she hesitated. “I—perhaps—sometime I’ll tell you more, but—the secret—Genevieve’s and mine—is up on Slipper Point!”
And before Doris could reply, she was gone, racing away along the darkening sand.
CHAPTER III
SALLY CAPITULATES
IT was the beginning of a close friendship. For more than a week thereafter, the girls were constantly together. They met every morning by appointment at the hotel dock, where Sally always rowed up in “45,” and Genevieve never failed to be the third member of the party. The canoe was quite neglected, except occasionally, in the evening, when Doris and Sally alone paddled about in her for a short time before sunset, or just after. Sally introduced Doris to every spot on the river, every shady bay and inlet or creek that was of the slightest interest. They explored the deserted mill, gathered immense quantities of water-lilies in Cranberry Creek, penetrated for several miles up the windings of the larger creek that was the source of the river, camped and picnicked for the day on the island, and paddled barefooted all one afternoon in the rippling water across its golden bar.
Beside that, they deserted the boat one day and walked to the ocean and back, through the scented aisles of an interminable pine forest. On the ocean beach they explored the wreck of a schooner cast up on the sand in the storm of a past winter, and played hide-and-seek with Genevieve among the billowy dunes. But in all this time neither had once mentioned the subject of the secret on Slipper Point. Doris, though consumed with impatient curiosity, was politely waiting for Sally to make any further disclosures she might choose, and Sally was waiting for—she knew not quite what! But had she realized it, she would have known she was waiting for some final proof that her confidence in her new friend was not misplaced.