“I really can’t tell you much,” replied Miss Phillips. “Except that the house is huge, and has so many rooms that you can hardly count them. There are lots of swings, too, and a tennis court; and we are to have two machines at our disposal. We’ll all have to wait and see it for ourselves, I guess,” she concluded, “for I could never do it justice!”
“But, Captain,” objected Ethel; “it will take all our time to take care of a house like that. We’ll never be able to do anything else.”
But again Miss Phillips smiled enigmatically.
“There will be servants to take care of that,” she explained; “the same servants who run the place during August.”
All this time Ruth had been studiously avoiding the stream which she knew to be the right one. Instead, she followed a little tributary which was becoming narrower and shallower.
“Are you sure we are right, Ruth?” questioned Miss Phillips, reaching into her pocket for her map. “This stream looks as if it were going to come to an end.”
Ruth stopped paddling and balanced her paddle across her lap while she too consulted her map.
“If I did miss the main stream,” she began, “I can’t imagine where——”
But her remark was interrupted by a sharp scream from Alice Endicott.
“I’m stuck in the mud!” she shrieked. “I can’t budge the canoe an inch!”