“Mickey,” said she as soon as she had reached that busy man without whom it seemed Greycliff could scarcely exist. “Mickey, I wish that you would investigate that place in the river. I really believe that there is something sticking up that caught that girl’s paddle. And we are going to have some real races pretty soon.”
“Oi think the only ‘crab’ was hersilf, miss. She did not know how to handle a paddle,” returned Mickey.
“That may be. I know the girls were excited, but I thought when I was swimming after the girls that my feet hit something there.”
“All right, thin. Oi’ll row out tomorry.”
“Thank you, Mickey, a thousand times! If you have time now, I’ll show you where I think it is. Here are Bee and Martha now. Come on, girls, let’s show Mickey where we think there might really be a ‘crab’.”
The girls accompanied Mickey, showed him the exact spot at which the canoes upset, and on the following day, Mickey and one of the other men rowed out with a pole to investigate. There, indeed, he found part of an old tree that had doubtless drifted down with the early spring floods and had become lodged in the mud, and perhaps other driftwood at the bottom of the stream. The branch that was sticking up nearly to the surface was not very large, but sufficient to catch a paddle or oar. Some of the girls were watching, as Mickey dislodged the obstruction and it came to the surface, floating down and guided shoreward by the pole.
“There! I knew something caught my paddle the other day,” said one of the girls who had had a similar upset in a single canoe. “You all laughed so when I said that it had, that I did not dare speak of it again, but I was sure something caught my paddle. It was just those sprangling twigs.”
Everything was quite safe for democracy, then, on the day of the great event, the race between the juniors and seniors. The winning crew were to give a consolation party to the defeated, and the girls had amicably decided on the menu and ordered the feast together, through a committee from each class, including the captains of the crews. Pauline said that it might just as well be charged to the seniors, but Isabel, who was at the telephone, ordering something from Greycliff Village, soberly said, “Charge it, please, to the junior class, Isabel Hunt ordering. A check will be sent as soon as possible, the next day, in fact.”
Pauline laughed and said, “Well, if you do win, you will have to pay the price.”
“That’s the point of this fine old jamboree, to make the defeated feel good. I’m prepared to be jolly whoever wins, but of course we are going to win!”