“What were you two doing? This is worse than the clothes basket elevator. What were you doing?”
“I was making a life preserver,” volunteered Tess, when she had been helped out of the bathtub and was standing on a big mat that absorbed the little rivulets of water streaming from her.
“A life preserver?” questioned Agnes.
“Yes,” Tess nodded. “I thought maybe I might fall off the houseboat and I didn’t see any life preservers on it, so I made one.”
“Out of the hot water bag,” put in Dot. “She tied it around her waist and she wanted me to tie one on me and make believe we fell into the bathtub. But I wouldn’t, and she got in, and it didn’t hold her up.”
“I should say it didn’t!” cried Agnes. “How could you expect a rubber bag full of water to hold you up? It couldn’t hold itself up.”
“It wasn’t full of water. I blew it up full of air just as Sammy Pinkney blows up his football,” said Tess. “And that floats in water, ’cause I saw it.”
“A hot water bag is different,” returned Ruth. “Yes, she has one on,” she added, as she and Agnes unwrapped from their sister some folds of cloth by which the partly inflated hot-water bag had been fastened around Tess’s waist.
“Don’t you ever do anything like that again!” scolded Dot, as Tess was sent to her room to dress while Linda came up to mop the floor.
“Well, what am I to do if I fall overboard off the Bluebird, I’m asking you?” called Tess, turning back, and holding her bath robe around her slim form. “There aren’t any life preservers on it!”