"Don't you say it, Danny!"
"Say what?"
"Whatever hot words were coming to your lips. As long as we feel that we're right in not risking Belle and Laura, never mind what the others think and say."
"This breeze is so fine," suggested Laura, "what do you say if we seat ourselves here and watch the river for a while?"
Accordingly the four young people seated themselves. The launch was the only craft in sight that was away from her moorings. A sailboat and three canoes lay tied to the lee side of the float, that is the off-side from the weather. Even they rocked a good deal.
"What kind of weather is coming?" asked Belle.
"It's going to be pretty squally, in all probability," spoke up
Midshipman Dan. "Do you see the big puffs of wind in the clouds yonder?"
"It must take a sailor to see that sort of thing," remarked Belle. "What I see in the cloud looks like big, fluffy masses of cotton, streaked with something darker."
"That's the wind," nodded Dave Darrin. "Now, girls, I don't want you to think me a muff. That wind may swerve, and not come this way, although in all probability the wind will get this way and the water will be rougher. If it does get rougher on the river, and if we had taken you two out, and the boat had capsized, then by some chance we might not have been able to get you to shore. What would your folks then say to us if we had had the miserable luck to survive you?"
"You did just right," Laura declared promptly. "To tell the truth, I didn't want to disappoint either of you boys this afternoon, but I didn't believe the wind was quiet enough for boating on the river. But mother reminded me that I was going with two young men who had been trained as sailors, and that I ought to be as safe as I would in the home parlor."