“Oh—Mother—” Terry drawled—“as if we’d bother him.”
That was one of the nicest things about Terry’s mother. She never intruded, and any advice she gave was always offered in a way that they could not possibly object to. But this evening her well-meant plan of leaving them alone to talk was not needed, for they soon followed her into the house, and after talking a while in sleepy monosyllables, without much ceremony fell asleep in comfortable beds.
The next morning brought a blue-and-gold day with a stiff northwest wind kicking up whitecaps on Bottle Bay. “Buckingham Palace” stood on a little neck of land, with the ocean on one side and the bay on the other.
“Let’s take the rowboat and go down the bay a bit,” Terry suggested. “It’s too cold for bathing.”
“We could take a look at the houseboat without disturbing the hermit,” Arden remarked. “Maybe——”
“Exactly what I had in mind,” Terry said. “You’re positively uncanny, Arden, the way you read people’s minds. We don’t need to mention it to Mother, though.”
It was after breakfast, and the girls were sitting on the bottom step of the porch, idly watching tiny ants rebuild their houses that had been washed away in the storm.
“Let me row, Terry, will you?” Sim asked. “I’m going to start in training this very day, and when we go back to Cedar Ridge in the fall I’ll be the champion swimmer of the college,” she bragged.
“You can row, all right, I’ve no desire to raise blisters on my lily-white palms,” Terry answered her, and going to the door of the house she called: “Mother, we’re going for a little row in the bay. The girls want to take a look around. Yes, we’ll be careful. ’Bye!”
On the bay side an old though seaworthy rowboat was moored, covered with a canvas which had kept out the rain. They quickly pulled off the cover, and Terry took the oars from their place. With a few uncertain pushes, they finally made one strong enough to get started.