“Do you know, Polly Page,” said Sue, with emphasis, “here we are planning to start a yacht club, and I never was even on a sail boat in all my life. Ted has been, though. She says she knows how to sail a ‘cat,’ because her brother Bob had one at Lake Quinnebaug last year, and she watched him.”
Polly looked at her meditatively.
“What’s a ‘cat’?”
“A boat. Ted says it’s a boat built as near like a box as it can be, and it won’t sink. I guess even if it happened to turn turtle, you could climb up on the outside, and sit there till things cleared up a bit.”
Polly broke into one of her quick peals of merriment.
“We’d stick like postage stamps, wouldn’t we, in a good rolling sea on the outside of a boat like that. I want a thin one, Sue, one that just clips through the water. The trouble is that most girls are as afraid of the water as cats. Yes, they are. Why, even Ted is afraid! She saw her brother sail a boat, but what does she know about it herself. We girls won’t have any boys around to sail our boats for us. We’re going to learn how to manage our own craft, and it will do us good too. I had a letter from Aunt Milly again. She says there are five good sail boats up at Eagle Bay that the boys left in charge of the Captain, and they won’t need much overhauling this year because Uncle Thurlow had them all repainted and caulked last spring.”
“Where do they stick the cork?” asked Sue, interestedly.
“Goose, caulk the seams, I mean, put a kind of wadding or interlining between the seams in the hull. And she says if we should need any more boats, the Captain has several at his landing of the same build, and uncle left word with him to take care of us. I don’t know whether we had better sail in pairs, or each have her own boat.”
“Oh, can’t I sail with you, Polly?”
“You would do better with Kate, and let me have Crullers.”