“He was worried, Peggy,” said Jack. Leslie thought it good of him to make excuses for his handsome but irritable host.
At once they all liked Jack Morgan. He turned out to be a cousin of Peggy’s, whom Mrs. Ives had invited for the summer at Steeple Rocks. Peggy privately informed Leslie that Jack was worth a dozen of their other guests, most of them friends of her father’s, she said. But almost everyone was grown up, she said, and Peggy had no chums of her own. Sarita and Leslie forthwith invited her to make chums of them, and they were not a little touched at the eagerness with which Peggy accepted the offer.
The little hurriedly-prepared supper broke any remaining ice. When Jack finally rode off with Peggy, both insisted that there must be a beach party at Steeple Rocks very soon, to which all the camping party would come. Beth thought that it would be very pleasant and accepted for the family, which was just as well; but she did not notice that while the rest commented on the kindness of the invitation, none of them committed themselves about coming.
“We did that very well, Dal,” Sarita remarked afterwards. “They know that we’d love to come, but if Mr. Ives appears and says anything, they may remember that Beth was the only one who said anything definite about accepting, and even she said ‘if we can.’ I am pretty sure that they are all regular summer folks with money and clothes and style.”
“It does not sound very well to hear Peggy criticise her father,” Dalton suggested, to the girls’ surprise. They had seen Peggy go up purposely but shyly to Dalton after supper, to say her “thank you,” they supposed, and they had noticed Dalton’s friendly response.
“I thought of it, too,” said Leslie, “and I am sure that Beth did; but at that, Peggy Ives may have reason to dread her father, even though she should not speak so before strangers. I don’t trust him.”
Yet it was Leslie, on the very next day, when she was at the beach, alone, who accepted an invitation to enter the Ives’ launch. She was the first one of the Secrest party to land at Steeple Rocks.
CHAPTER VI
A “CLOSE-UP” VIEW
Dalton had gone to the town on the railroad, where he had arranged to have his mail sent for a while, writing to the lawyer again and telling him to direct important letters to the general delivery there for the present. Sarita had a headache and was lying down for the afternoon, looked in upon occasionally by Elizabeth, who was at her usual occupation of sketching or painting. Beth ascribed Sarita’s headache to some cheap candy which the girls had bought at the village and was hoping that a little soreness about Sarita’s throat would not amount to anything.
Leslie, who had been in the ocean earlier in the day with Elizabeth, was a bit of bright color on the beach in a red frock and sweater to match. She was easily seen from the launch, where figures waved at her and pointed toward the dock, a small one at the end of the town nearest the Secrest headland, as Peggy had begun to call it.