“Well, it was the first one I got hold of. That’s why. But, tell—tell—how came you up there?”
“Yes, everything, tell everything!” begged Dorothy, fairly dancing about them in her eagerness.
“Melvin—Melvin did it!” said Jim. “We might all be at the bottom of the sea——”
“Hush!” almost screamed Aurora, beginning to tremble. “It was so horrible—I——”
With more of sympathy than had been between them before, Dolly slipped her arm around Aurora’s shoulders and playfully ordered:
“If you boys don’t tell how you came on our promenade deck, when you belonged on the tender, you sha’n’t have any breakfast!”
“Melvin. I tell you it was Melvin. He’s the only one of us didn’t sleep like a log. He felt the hurricane coming, right through his dreams, and waked the lot of us, as soon as the first clap came. So he rushed us over the plank to take off the awnings——”
“With such a wind sucking under them might have made the boat turn turtle, Mrs. Calvert, don’t you know? At sea—that’s why I presumed to give orders without——”
“Oh, my dear lad, I now ‘order’ you to ‘give orders’ whenever you think best. We can trust you, and do thank you. But how dark it seems now the lightning has stopped. Isn’t there any sort of light we can get?” said Aunt Betty, sitting down with Elsa and folding a steamer rug around them both.