“I reckon we’ll have some appetite for lunch, now, Miss Silsbee. Yet I almost feel that I owe you an apology.”
“For what, pray?”
“For not having been clever enough to find some way of killing that lumbering beast and presenting you with its hide. What a novel suitcase it would have made for you.”
Ida Silsbee laughed merrily. There was so much clear grit in her make-up that she had now recovered her composure fully.
“You’re not easily pleased, are you?” she challenged, whimsically.
“Well, we’ll have to admit we made a bungle of the affair all around,” teased Tom. “For you see, after all we left the moss behind on the island.”
“Oh, that moss!” cried the girl, pouting. “I’m glad I did drop it, for I shall always hate that particular species of moss whenever I think of the fate it so nearly brought upon us.”
The launch was now slipping over the water at its full speed, so it was not long ere these young travelers came in sight of the Tremaine winter bungalow once more.
Henry Tremaine and his wife were alone on the porch as the boat’s whistle sounded just before the landing was made.