"Cricket, your stockings are all coming down," interrupted Eunice.
"Yes, I know," said Cricket, coolly, stopping long enough to produce her side-elastics from her pocket. "I took off my stocking-coddies to tie the oars up with, to make my tent. Why, I had lots of fun, girls. I couldn't think of any shipwrecked hero who was ever stuck in the mud, so I played the mud was a desert, and that I was Marco What's-his-name in his shrouded tent, and—"
"It was the Turk, who was at midnight in his shrouded tent," interrupted Eunice, again.
"Was it? Well, I played it, anyway. Then I put my head down on my arm to look like him, and I must have gone to sleep, for the sun was pretty hot, even under my tent, and it made me dreadfully sleepy. Then I heard you call me, and there was the water all around me. Can't we start, now, Edna?"
"We can't get over that last bar nearest the shore, yet awhile," answered Edna, "but we can start as soon as there is the least bit of water over it, for by the time we get there the water will be deep enough to float us."
"I don't care how long we stay, now," said Eunice, contentedly, "since Cricket is here, and not out there all alone. I'll row in, Cricket."
"See, there are the boys running along the shore, and beckoning. Probably they mean it is safe to start now. Let's get ready. My goody, doesn't it seem as if we had been here a week?"
"Don't let's come again till it's high tide in the middle of the day," said Eunice. "Here, now we have the things all in."
"Isn't this boat a spectacle?" said Eunice, surveying its mud-splashed sides. "Won't the boys give you a blessing, Miss Scricket!"
"A blessing is a good thing to have," answered Cricket, quite undisturbed, as she yielded the oars to Eunice, and sat in the stern with Edna.