Peeping over the rocks, the girls caught each other’s hands in their excitement. Bill came up out of the water and shook it from him like a big mastiff. He looked around hastily to see if he were observed and the girls kept very still. Sarita and Leslie, indeed, ducked behind the rocks, but Peggy, who had taken a black silk handkerchief from her neck, wrapped it about her head and kept on looking.
It was not very likely that Bill would see them, yet he might if he looked above on his way over the rocks from those at the base of Steeple Rocks, where he had emerged from the Cove waters.
Peggy gave the word to start up. “He’s going over the rocks now. Stoop low and you’ll get to the top in a jiffy! He’ll only hope that we haven’t seen him, if he does see us. But it isn’t so wonderful for a person to go in swimming anywhere here.”
CHAPTER XVI
THE DILEMMA
From the rocky steps where they had been watching the return of Bill Ritter, Leslie, Sarita and Peggy plunged into the woods as soon as possible and by that more devious route reached the Secrest camp. They were rather surprised to find it not yet ten o’clock, but they had spent much less time with Peggy, at what she called her fashion show, than they had expected. Then the time spent in the Retreat and in waiting for Bill’s appearance must have been much less than it seemed.
When they reached the new clearing on the slight rise of ground not far from the spring, they found Dalton and his men hard at work and Dalton jubilant over the prospect of speedy building. Beth was sitting on a pile of logs making a sketch of the place and the workers, “for us to remember how it looked,” she said.
Dalton dropped his work to join the girls and look at the sketch. “Pretty good, sister,” said he. “Do you know I’ve a great notion to plaster this house and stay here through the winter.”
“What do you mean, Dal,—stay alone, or no school for any of us?” The tone of the surprised Beth was not as reproving as Dalton might have expected.
“No school for anybody,” asserted Dalton, though he had really not thought this out before. “It would be the best thing in the world for you, Beth, and think what snow scenes you could immortalize with your pen, pencil and brush!”
“Ridiculous boy!”