“Well, you see Mother’s been awfully sick and she isn’t at all well yet. Has to stay in bed a good deal of the day and just sits around on the veranda the rest of the time. She couldn’t tend to things like that, so I’ve got used to doing them myself lately. I dress myself and fix my hair all by myself, without the least help from her,—which I couldn’t do three months ago. I did it today. Don’t you think I look all right?”
Again Sally flushed with the painful consciousness of her own unkempt appearance, especially her bare feet. “Oh, yes! You look fine,” she acknowledged sheepishly. And then added, as a concession to her own attire:
“I hate to get all dressed up these hot days, ’specially when there’s no one around. Mother often makes me during ‘the season,’ ’cause she says it looks bad for the Landing to see us children around so sloppy.”
“My mother says,” remarked Doris, “that one always feels better to be nicely and cleanly dressed, especially in the afternoons, if you can manage it. You feel so much more self-respecting. I often hate to bother to dress, too, but I always do it to please her.”
Sally promptly registered the mental vow that she would hereafter array herself and Genevieve in clean attire every single afternoon, or perish in the attempt. But clothes was not a subject that ever interested Doris Craig for any length of time, so she soon switched to another.
“Can’t you and the baby come out with me in my canoe for a while?” she suggested. “I’m so lonesome. And perhaps you know how to paddle. You could sit in the bow, and Genevieve in the middle.”
“Yes, I know how to paddle,” admitted Sally. To tell the truth she knew how to run every species of boat her father owned, not even omitting the steam launches. “But we can’t take Genevieve in a canoe. She won’t sit still enough and Mother has forbidden it. Let’s go out in my rowboat instead. Dad lets me use old 45 for myself any time I want, except in the very rush season. It’s kind of heavy and leaks a little, but I can row it all right.” She indicated a boat far down at the end of the line.
“But I can’t row!” exclaimed Doris. “I never learned because we’ve always had a canoe up at Lake Placid in the Adirondacks where we’ve usually gone.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” laughed Sally. “I can row the whole three. You sit in the stem with Genevieve, and I’ll take you around the river to some places I warrant you’ve never seen.”
Filled with the spirit of the new adventure, the two hurried along, bearing a somewhat reluctant Genevieve between them, and clambered into the boat numbered “45” at the end of the line. Doris seated herself in the stern with Genevieve and the box of candy. And the baby was soon shyly cuddling up to her and dipping her chubby little fist into the box at frequent intervals. Sally established herself in the bow rowing seat, pushed off with a skilful twist of her oars, and was soon swinging out into the tide with the short, powerful strokes of the native-born to Manituck.