“Who’s the Captain?” asked Kate.
Polly shook her head, and laid the letter on the table. “I don’t know any more about it than you girls do, but I want to go. Grandfather is willing to act as consort, he says. You know, a consort is the ship that trots along to look after other ships. That means he will stay up at the hotel near the telegraph office, and have regular meals. I know him like a book. But Aunty Welcome will go along as cook, and I suppose we should have a chaperon.”
“Oh, let’s don’t,” implored Sue, pushing back her hair from her forehead, as she always did when she was listening intently. “Ruth is seventeen, and Kate is going on eighteen. Let’s do it all ourselves. It will be ever so much more fun.”
“And it won’t be as if we were wrecked on a desert isle, Polly,” laughed Ruth. “There are sure to be plenty other vacationers around with whom we will get acquainted. I suppose there’s a real house, isn’t there?”
Polly nodded her head.
“I guess so, from the letter. Aunt Milly always lived at the hotel up the beach, and the boys had an old fisherman’s cottage—”
“Do you mean a fisherman’s old cottage?” suggested Isabel.
“Well, anyway, it was a sort of bungalow, where they camped out. Grandfather says he remembers that much. We don’t want to take a lot of things along, girls, just enough to get on with. I can put all I shall need into a couple of suit cases, and that will save bothering over baggage.”
“But, Polly, what shall we do after we get there?” Isabel asked, anxiously. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. Are we going to camp out?”
“We’re going to do just what seems best to us after we arrive,” said Polly cheerfully. “The boys had a yacht club, I know, and if they had one we can have one. I want to go ever so much, and I want you girls to go too. If grandfather goes, and Aunty Welcome, nothing can happen to us, don’t you see it can’t? I suggest that we organize, or rather reorganize, right now, and start our first vacation club, and call it, call it—”