“There isn’t much,” replied Mickey. “Oi wuz worrkin’ in the boathouse an’ the gurrls wuz all leavin’ the river. After I didn’t hear ’em no more, I looks out an’ I sees the wan gurrl in the canoe, an’ I starrted around the buildin’ fur wan o’ me tools I’d left out there. Thin I hurrd a yell an’ there was Miss Hilary beatin’ it down the river in a canoe and the little one was nowhere to be seen. So I gets out a rowboat and starts after ’em. All of em wuz in the water when I got there.”
After hearing Mickey’s account, Betty and Virginia decided not to bother Miss Randolph, and in an hour or so Cathalina came over, quite refreshed, finding Hilary up and demanding to go down to dinner. Betty ran to ask Miss Randolph, who consented. Cathalina reported that Isabel was “nearly all right,” and that it was as they thought—she had gotten hurt when she pushed away from the branches of the log. “The doctor was there and said that there was nothing wrong. Isabel says that it is to make up for her not being in the wreck last year—she has to be known to fame in some way!”
“Isn’t that just like Isabel?” said Betty.
There were only a few days more of school. Many plans had been changed in regard to public events. There was no lawn fete, and the Glee Club concert had been more like an ordinary recital at the Hall, with only a few visitors from Greycliff Village. But the girls adjusted themselves to the new conditions and made ready for the summer vacation with all its interests, chief of which was to get home to mothers and fathers who were seeing their boys off to various camps, or expecting them to leave as soon as called.
Virginia, as she had hoped, won second place as debater, the highest honors going to Isabel. Thanks to one of the wealthy trustees, this was a comfortable little sum of money for each of them. Virginia also won a collegiate scholarship and was leaving with the happy feeling that not only were her bills all paid, but there was a good chance of her returning for another year at Greycliff. “Any one who makes as good candy as you do,” Isabel solemnly told her one day, “will always be welcome at Greycliff!”
Isabel was to pay a visit to Cathalina in the summer and claimed to be “in ecstasies at the thought.” She had put her arms around Cathalina’s neck and held her close the first time she saw Cathalina after the accident.
“To think you went right in after me!”
“Nonsense,” said Cathalina, embarrassed. “Of course I would.”
THE END