“Then you are frightened, Ruthie?” said her sister. “Tell me.”
Ruth, however, would say no more. She went back to the clump of brush overlooking the sands. If the visitors should prove to be friends she did not want them to escape before she called to them.
The voices did not sound kind at all. Ruth hesitated. Agnes, creeping out after her, likewise listened to the broken snatches of conversation which reached their ears.
“Pirates!” exploded the younger sister, her lips close to Ruth’s ear.
“Pirates your grandmother!” returned Ruth, exasperated.
“Wish Sammy Pinkney was here,” giggled Agnes, for with all their trouble she could joke. “He ought to be a judge of pirates by this time.”
“You needn’t laugh.”
“Maybe not. But I won’t cry—yet,” said Agnes, more cheerful than she had been for some hours.
The two girls, clinging to each other’s hands in the shivery mist, waited and listened. The men who had landed from the boat evidently drew the craft well up on the beach. Then some of them walked up to the spring.
“Agnes!” ejaculated Ruth, impressively, but in a very low voice.