So to church they went, in their dirty white flannels. It was their intention to sit near the door and try to escape observation, but they found the back seats of the little church full of children, and a churchwarden ushered them all the way up the church to the front pew, which they took. Just before the service began, a lady and gentleman, and a young lady who was apparently their daughter, came into the large square pew in which our boys sat, whereupon the tanned cheeks of our heroes blushed vehemently. The young lady sat opposite Frank, and every now and then gazed at him curiously. When Frank mustered up courage to look back at her, he thought he knew the face, and as the sermon advanced he recollected that it was that of a friend of his sister Mary's, who had once stayed at his father's house. When they left the church he went up to her, and taking off his cap, said,
"I beg your pardon, but are you not Miss Rose?"
"Yes, Mr. Merivale, but I thought you would not have remembered me. Papa, this is Mary Merivale's brother."
Mr. Rose looked rather curiously at Frank and his friends, and Frank at once answered the unspoken question by saying,
"We are yachting, sir, and we are windbound, without any change of clothes. We should have been ashamed to come to church if we had thought we should meet anyone we knew."
"I am very glad to have met you. You and your friends must come and dine with me," was Mr. Rose's reply.
So, in spite of their slimy-covered clothes and fishy smell, they were welcomed, and had a pleasant day. Edith Rose was so very pretty and nice, that Frank began to think Dick was not quite such a goose for being spoons on his sister, as he had previously thought him.
About ten they returned to the yacht, and found that the wind had risen, and was blowing tolerably hard. As they were anxious to get back in time to be with Mr. Meredith on Monday morning, they resolved to sit up until twelve o'clock and then start homeward. The night was starlight, and light enough for them to see their way on the water; and as the hands on their watches pointed to twelve they hoisted sail and glided away through the grey stillness of the night, beneath the starlit blue of the midnight sky, with no sound audible save the hissing of the water curling against their bows, the flapping of the sails as they tacked, and the occasional cry of a bird in the reeds; and about five o'clock they arrived home, and turned in on board the yacht for a couple of hours' sleep before breakfast.