“Why didn’t you tell them Tess and Dot were lost?” asked Agnes, gulping down a sob.
“I don’t want anybody to know it, if we can help,” returned Ruth. “It just looks as though we didn’t take sufficient care of them.”
“It—it was all my fault,” choked Agnes. “If I had tied the boat as you told me——”
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is,” said Ruth, quickly. “Or, if it is anybody’s fault! We don’t want folks to say that the Corner House girls from Milton don’t know enough to take care of each other while they are under canvas.”
[CHAPTER XVII—ON WILD GOOSE ISLAND]
“My!” Tess gasped, sitting in the stern of the drifting boat, “how fast the shores go past, Dot! We’re going up the river awfully quick.”
“And so j-j-jerky!” exclaimed her sister, clinging to the Alice-doll.
“You aren’t really afraid, are you, Dot?”
“No-o. Only for Alice. She’s always been weakly, you know, since that awful time she got buried alive,” said Dot, seriously. “And if she should get wet and catch her death of cold——”
“But you mustn’t drop her overboard,” warned Tess.