“I know-ow!” soothed Betty. “It was too bad you couldn’t get it!”
She drew on her last pinch of pep, of breath--the Holly--as they raced on, over the tall, white sand-peak, shadowy in the gloaming, tripping over wild pea-vines, empurpling, faintly now, the lower dunes.
The scampering sea-breeze racing from their own beach, where cranberries slept with their coral cheeks on dimming pillows, clasped them like a brother.
“We’ll just have time to gather a few chunks of the coppery wreck-wood. Then--then we’ll have to hurry back,” said Betty. “I really didn’t think it was so far to this spot, and I guess the Guardian didn’t either! You swept her----”
“Hush! Listen! The chug, chug, of a launch--motor-boat--passing quite close in to shore, too! Tide’s high!” Sara halted on tiptoe now, a poised, breathless figure, and held up her hand.
“I’m afraid!” whispered Betty. “I wish we hadn’t come!”
“Nonsense! Nobody runs close in to shore--close to our beach--except Captain Andy--funny if ’twas him!--the artist’s brother, or--or, now an’ again, that seal-hunter, who passed when I was camouflaging the dory--toothless bead-eye”--with a recovering chuckle--“whose face, the hunter’s I mean, I can’t.... Goodness! I rather hope it isn’t--him!”
“If we crouched down behind those two low sand-mounds in front, we could peep over--between them--and see who it was without being seen,” pleaded Betty timorously.
“Right you are--little Chicken-heart,” came the older girl’s response.
“I feel as if I were in the trenches now, looking over the top.” Betty gathered a handful of purple pea-blossoms from the sand-rampart before her.