Aunty Welcome lived up to her name in the dinner that she had prepared for her “Marse Bob.” Polly had declared the dining-room in the cottage was too small for such a festive occasion, so dinner was served in state out on the porch. It was an evening they all remembered out of a long, happy summer-time. Two small tables set together made quite a commodious banquet board. Aunt Cynthy’s bouquets, freshened up after a good drink of water, made a pretty centerpiece, with the blue and gold yacht club pennant waving above it. The Admiral insisted on Polly taking the head of the table with Kate, as club chaperon, at the foot.
“I am merely a guest,” he said, “and will sit at the Commodore’s right hand, if she will permit.”
Long after the sun went down, the little dinner party went on, until the moon rose, and the bay lay like a sea of quicksilver and jet below them. Then they heard the sound of wheels along the shore road, and Tom’s long cheery hail, and the Admiral rose to take his leave.
“To-morrow,” he told them, “you had better stay right here and rest. The day’s event is for twenty-footers and over, and they have a long course to cover. I’ll run over in the afternoon and see how you are. Tom or the Captain will go over the yachts with me, for I want to be sure everything is shipshape.”
Dorothy and Bess had returned with the girls, and as it was their first night at Lost Island, there were whisperings and smothered laughter long after the official “taps” had been sounded.
“What’s ‘taps’?” echoed Ted when Bess asked what they meant. “Just listen.”
Out in the kitchen Aunty Welcome’s steady footfalls could be heard as she moved around, locking the door, winding the clock, humming a sweet old camp-meeting tune under her breath, and finally stepping to the foot of the stairs, to blow out the bracket lamp that hung there.
“You all keep still, now, and go to sleep, and say your prayers, like good chilluns, you hyar me?” she asked forcibly. There was a dead silence, supposed to come only from heavy sleepers. As soon as she had gone to her own room, Ted’s head rose from the couch, and she whispered:
“That’s ‘taps’.”