"A ship—a ship!" shrieked keen-sighted Marjory.
"Where away?" demanded Mr. Black.
"There she blows!" quoted Marjory, employing the only other nautical term she could call to mind and pointing with an extended forefinger.
"That's not a whale—that's a boat," scoffed Henrietta, who had traveled. "It's whales that blow."
"I don't care," returned Marjory. "And boats do too, when they have whistles. Anyhow, I saw it first—— Look out, Mabel!"
But the frail edge of the bank had already crumbled under weighty Mabel, who, unexpectedly, shot downward to the beach. No harm was done, however, for the sand was clean and soft.
"Mabel," laughed Mr. Black, "you'll have my whole hundred-and-twenty acres in the lake if you don't stop tumbling off the edge of my property. This isn't the first time you've taken a large slice off the landscape."
"It's about the ninth," admitted Mabel, scrambling back to the grassy top. "I'm always forgetting how easily it breaks away."
"That's because it sticks out a little over the top," explained sage Jean. "In very stormy weather the waves wash against the bank and scoop it out."