“Why do you tell her to do that?” demanded Doris, curiously.
“ ’Cause Mother says it’ll make her mouth a bad shape if she keeps it up, and she told me it was up to me to stop it. You see I have Genevieve with me most of the time. Mother’s so busy.” But by this time, Doris’s roving eye had caught the sign forbidding children to play in the boats.
“Do you see that?” she asked. “Aren’t you afraid to be sitting around in that boat?”
“Huh!” exclaimed Sally scornfully. “That doesn’t mean Genevieve and me.”
“Why not?” cried Doris perplexedly.
“ ’Cause we belong here. Captain Carter’s our father. All these boats belong to him. Besides, it’s so early in the season that it doesn’t matter anyway. Even we don’t do it much in July and August.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Doris, a light beginning to break on her understanding. “Then that—er—lady up at the candy counter is your mother?” She referred to the breathlessly busy, pleasant, though anxious-faced woman who had sold her the candy.
“Yes. She’s awfully busy all the time, ’cause she has to wait on the soda and candy and ice cream, and see that the freezer’s working all right, and a lot of other things. In July and August we have to have girls from the village to help. We don’t see much of her in the summer,—Genevieve and I. We just have to take care of ourselves. And that’s Dad, down on the dock.” She pointed to a tall, lanky, slouchily dressed man who was directing the lowering of a sail in one of the catboats.
“Yes, I know Captain Carter,” averred Doris. “I hired this canoe of him.”
“Did you go and hire a canoe—all by yourself?” inquired Sally, eyeing her very youthful new acquaintance with some wonder. “How did your mother come to let you?”