“Lucile,” cried Mrs. Payton, and then, as her voice would not carry above all the noise, “Go after her, Phil,” she said. “If she gets separated from us now, we will have a hard time finding her.”
Phil hurried off and was soon lost to sight in the swaying crowd.
“Oh, what did she do that for?” wailed Jessie. “If Lucy goes and gets lost now in all this crowd——”
“Don’t worry; Phil will have her back in a jiffy,” said Mr. Payton, soothingly, but the frown on his forehead betrayed his own anxiety. 109
The gangplanks were lowered, and the people had already begun to surge forward, and still no sign of either Lucile or Phil.
They eagerly searched the faces of the passers-by, nodding to some, yet scarcely seeing them, while Mr. Payton began to mutter something about “tying a string to that cyclonic young flyaway” when he got her back again.
Five minutes passed. The deck was beginning to be emptied of people, and they had begun to make their way slowly toward the gangplank, when Phil came rushing up to them, very red and very much out of breath.
“Well?” they cried together, and Mr. Payton took him by the shoulder, demanding, sternly, “Where is she?”
“Wouldn’t it make you sick?” panted Phil, disgustedly. “Here I rush all over the boat trying to locate her, and get everybody scared to death, thinking she’s fallen overboard or something, and then I find her down on the float there, talking to the——”
“What?” interrupted Mr. Payton, incredulously.