“Heavens! Her! She looks as if she had escaped from some--boat--bedlam!” Atlas drew a raving breath.
“Yes--she’s camouflaged--a perfect lightning-bug, too! But you can have her!” With an hysterical laugh the dory’s owner stepped out, laid down her hand-painted oars, deaf to the rude voice maligning her boat--the dim, beauteous home-sands, too. “And I--I won’t ask to go in her, either!” she magnanimously added.
“Gee! but you’re a brick.”
“No more than you are! You held up shipping--that heavy old ship’s rib--or seemed to!”
But Atlas was deaf to the tardy tribute, as the dory, no longer even a bead-eye, but a radio nightmare--all ghostly a-shimmer--dashed out upon the tide.
“Well! Well! we got him--nabbed him. The Coast Guard men said they never saw a dory stretch herself like that one; that I just drove her--sent her for all she was worth!... They--they nearly cracked their sides laughing at her, too, when ’twas all over--wanted to know what ‘nut palace’ she’d escaped from--said the spy must have thought he had an evil spirit on his track!”
It was an hour later. Atlas was holding forth to nineteen girls and their breathless Guardian upon the dark sands--on the very spot where the air-scouts, spy-hunting aviators, had made a landing.
“I--I went ashore with them at the Station--after they searched the launch,” he added.
“Oh! what did they find in her? a--a woman’s wig?” cried Sara, who had been remembering, furiously remembering--minutely recalling--during the past hour. “A--a--the most charming brown wig, with little wavy threads of gray in the mat over the ears; that--that’s what ‘Old Perfect,’ with the feather turban, the muff in April, the rather high cheek-bones, the very smooth skin, wore up at Camp ... Goody! I was envying her the--gray--hairs.” The voice of the fire-witch broke upon a mettlesome little canter of laughter.