On came the plane, losing altitude with every split second, and sailed over her head a bare thirty feet above the water. Then as she faced about to watch it land, the tail of her eye caught sight of Terry hauling himself over the edge of the float.
“Get you for that last one!” he cried, and scrambled to his feet. “‘Who laughs last,’ you know!”
“I know—” mocked Dorothy, evading his grasp and running up the springboard. She dived and her body entered the water with scarcely a sound.
As she rose she turned lazily on her back.
“Come and get me!” she tantalized. Then as she saw him start in pursuit, she rolled over and headed out toward the seaplane which now floated two or three hundred yards away toward the mouth of the inlet and Long Island Sound.
Terry knew the speed developed by her flagrantly perfect crawl, and did not attempt to follow her. He chuckled as he watched the bob of scarlet and the flash of a brown arm that was all he could see of Dorothy.
“Hey, where’s Dorothy?” called Betty as she and Phil clambered on to the raft.
“Halfway to Boston, I guess. Race you to the beach for the cones!”
All three cut the rumpled surface of the water with a single splash.
Dorothy’s interest in the airplane that had just landed was twofold. Since qualifying for her private pilot’s license earlier in the summer, she had met most of the owners of planes living in or near New Canaan. To the best of her knowledge the Loening Amphibian which her father had given her for rounding up the Martinelli gang was the only one of that model privately owned in that part of Connecticut. That the plane lying just ahead on the water was a duplicate of her own meant that the owner was not a local person.