Libby was no exception. He fogged the air with his stricken cry.
“Oh-h! he’s done for,” he wailed. “Knocked out--done for; the--the best lad that ever set foot in the yard--an’ the quickest to take hold--no ‘sass’ about him, at all, if he is a--rich--man’s--son!”
“Shut up--before I choke you!” growled a steadier voice, the foreman’s. “Done for! Not much! His head came against that lumber-pile. He was doing his bit and it sure was the main bitt that time”--in low, shaken tones--“with a girl’s life depending on it!”
But the girl--why! she felt herself shrinking into such a little “bit” that it seemed as if, presently, she must fade out altogether into the foggy consternation of the ship-yard.
Piteously she looked around for her Camp Fire Sisters. In the deepest pit of blunder and humiliation they would stand by her--even even though Libby was calling the heavens to witness that the fallen rib, grinning in the sunlight, had more sense than the rib that was taken out of Adam’s side and made into a girl--“so it had, by gosh!”
CHAPTER XIV
THE LAUNCHING
“Hurrah! She kicks! She crawls!... She goes!”
It was an hour later. The girls, nineteen of them, with their Guardian, were standing upon the skirts of the adjoining shipyard, watching, with a thrill only a shade less keen than that which had heralded the landing of a war-plane by their Council Fire, the shooting-off of a new vessel on to the water--the curling, laughing high tide which rose crowing to meet her, its bride.
Atlas was with them. Until the end of the War--or as long as he was a shipyard worker--he would be Atlas now, for the foreman had caught the merry deification from Olive’s lips.