“Indeed, we will,” Dorothy cried, happily, “and I’m so pleased. Mamma always is busy regatta week, and so is papa, and Bess and I just have to look after ourselves. She’s going on the Adventure too for the race. Oh, Polly, it’s splendid to watch them. Last year, at the finish, the Adventure and Mermaid were right together, and we all stood up on chairs, and waved flags at them, and shouted as they came down the last stretch with every inch of canvas crowded on.”
Polly was very busy carving the watermelon in fancy fashion, so that when it fell apart, it looked like a huge, red-hearted lily.
“Makes it taste better,” she said, judiciously. “Who won last year, Dorothy?”
“Oh, the Adventure, of course. Right at the very last they crowded on another reef—what do you call that little bit of a sail way up top on a sloop, Polly?”
Polly shook her head.
“T’gallant something, isn’t it? That’s what the Captain calls my eyebrows. Tarry top lights, and t’gallant eyebrows, so it must mean something way high up.”
“Probably,” Dorothy agreed. “Anyway, they let out another reef, and the Adventure just slipped by the Mermaid like a bit of down. Papa’s boat’s a sloop. It seems to me it’s all sails. It looks like a great gull with outspread wings when it’s going full tilt out to sea.”
“You must always speak of a ship as she or her,” corrected Bess. “Papa called you a sandpiper for that, Dolly.”
“I don’t care,” Dorothy laughed. “I want to tell the girls about it. There are six staterooms on it, and when the season closes up here at Eagle Bay, we sail south to Boston, and then home. Bess and I go to boarding-school.”
Just then Tom appeared around the west shore, holding down the Pirate, while he called,