“Well, I am not going to race,” Isabel said, decidedly. “I want to finish my shell portìere before we go home, and fix up my collection, and it’s too hard work.”
“I’d like to race, but I’m afraid to,” Crullers put in, dubiously. “Polly, I just can’t.”
“Well, don’t then,” said Polly, cheerfully. “You two can be our rocking-chair fleet. There’s always one in every club. You may sit up here and enjoy the view with Aunty Welcome.”
The following days were the busiest that Lost Island had seen that summer. Tom and Nancy came over every morning, after their own work was done, advising and assisting. Dorothy and Bess were enthusiastic over the Junior event. There were more entries for it than ever before, Commodore Vaughan said, and they were all girls. Every afternoon the graceful little “cats” and knockabouts, yawls and skipjacks, sailed on the bay, and it looked as if Nancy and Dorothy had the best showing, for theirs were the largest boats.
The course was neither difficult nor dangerous in any way, and providing the weather and wind held fair, the race was bound to be a spirited one, for it would be a straight away run.
One day they all went over to the Orienta Club to look at the trophy the winner of the Junior event would bear away. It was an exact reproduction of the large Championship Cup the Orienta Club had held for several years. The cup stood about eight inches high, lined with gold, and shaped like a chalice, the outer side was of richly chased silver, and engraved.
“I like that very much,” Polly remarked, critically, as she scrutinized the workmanship on it. “Don’t you remember, Ruth, the summer we went down to Old Point Comfort with grandfather and saw the regatta? I went on the committee boat that day, and followed the race. But the cup didn’t look like a cup at all. It looked more like a silver ice-water pitcher.”
“Maybe it was a flagon,” Kate said meditatively. “Did it have a beak, and a handle?”
“Two handles,” Polly returned, “and a large curved beak, and a cover to it like a syrup jug. And yet they called it a cup.”
“This one has two handles, look, Polly,” said Ted. “I like it that way.”