“Yes, and you scolded me for it, too,” he said.
“I did. We didn’t need that bunny rabbit at all, but these babies are going to need feeding, and we shall have to feed them with whatever we can get, rabbits or what. And we can take care of them, Delbert, you and I, till somebody comes. We will do it in spite of Mr. Pearson.”
“Pearson!” said the boy fiercely; “he can just go to—to blazes.”
Marian leaned down and kissed him. “No, dear,” she said lightly, “but he may go to some other port and let the police catch him and send him and the launch back to Mr. Cunningham.”
The boy laughed chokily and, twining his arms about his sister’s waist, held her closely while she stroked his hair.
“No, darling,” she said presently, “we will not worry. You and I can do a lot of things; you will see. Now, here come the girls with the crabs. We mustn’t let them be frightened.”
Delbert straightened up. “How many did you get?” he called, and Marian smiled at the easy cheerfulness of his tone.
“Oh, you will do,” she said approvingly, “you will do.”
While she cooked and prepared the crabs, she sent the children off after clams. Under Clarence’s tuition Delbert had become quite an expert at finding clams, and fortunately they were plentiful. Marian, poor child, wondered how long one could live on an exclusive diet of crabs and clams before getting utterly sick and tired of them.
She decided to put everybody on a rather short allowance of bread, so as to make it last longer and explained it to them when she called them up to eat. They did not mind; they preferred crabs anyway.