“Suspire. And be sure and do it very quietly, Isabel, so as not to disturb the race.”
Isabel laughed good-humoredly with the rest. The six weeks’ vacation at Lost Island had helped her in many ways. She would always be more precise than the other girls, more attentive to the formalities of life, as Miss Calvert expressed it, but the hearty, daily companionship and example set by the rest had filed down many sharp little points in her character. At Calvert Hall both Ted and Sue had loved to tease her, but someway she did not mind it any more. She could laugh back at them like Kate or Polly now, and it was rarely that one of “Isabel’s grumbles” was heard. “Lady Vanitas” she would always be, for she dearly loved pretty clothes and dainty things. Sue had expressed her ideas on dress aptly one day when she had remarked that Isabel couldn’t even wear a sweater at basket ball unless it had a fancy border to it and a stickpin in front. Even to-day the brim of her white duck yachting cap was pinned jauntily back with a class pin, while the other girls had turned theirs down to keep the sun out of their eyes. It seemed as if Isabel’s collar never wilted under the hottest sun, her belt never sagged out of place, and her shoe strings never came untied. Polly’s eyes always lingered over this member of her crew approvingly, for she, too, loved neatness and good taste.
All of the club verandas were thronged with onlookers during that final half hour. Both boats were hesitating under a vagrant puff of adverse wind, when suddenly the Adventure seemed to get under way and slipped steadily down the course, ahead of her New York rival. Something white fluttered from her deck, and all of the girls waved their handkerchiefs wildly in response. Somewhere back in the crowd on shore a boy’s voice shouted:
“Come along, Adventure, come along there!”
The girls laughed, for they knew it must be Tom, losing his head at the critical moment. The little sloop held gallantly to the point she had gained, and glided finally over the imaginary line that ended the course, while cheer on cheer rang out from the club house and the shore away up to the hotel. The cup would remain with the Orienta Club for another season.
After the shouts had at last died away, and the fussy little committee launch had puffed back and forth among the returning yachts, the girls took their leave, and started homeward, with the Admiral and the Vaughan girls in tow. The Doctor had undertaken to return Mrs. Bardwell safely to the house of the roses, and she declared as she kissed each girl that it had been the first day she had spent in society in twenty years.
“Bless her,” Polly said tenderly, as she watched the Doctor tuck the tan lap robe about her. “She doesn’t know what a nice ‘society’ she is all by herself.”
“Admiral Page,” interposed Ted, gravely, “isn’t Polly sentimental?”
“All sailors should be,” rejoined the Admiral, his eyes twinkling. “Not exactly sentimental, but full of sentiment, eh, Polly, mate?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Polly, but she was thinking of something else, thinking of Nancy and the Junior Cup.