“We don’t have croup, grandfather,” Polly interposed, that last day, when he dined with them in state at the little cottage.
“Well, never mind, whatever you should be threatened with, I know that the Captain has you on his mind, and you’ll be looked after and made to behave if you get too headstrong.”
“What will he do to us?” Ted and Sue leaned eagerly forward.
“Put you in irons down below,” laughed the Admiral, and he sang a line or two of a rollicking sailor song,
“Down below, down below.
Sailors often go below,
Storms are many on the ocean.
Sailors have to go below.”
But they missed him until the duties and excitement of the yacht club made them even forget his departure. Like everything else she undertook, Polly went into the thing heart and soul, with both feet and hands and her sleeves rolled up, as Sue said. She was up at five and down on the beach with Ruth, hunting over the last tide’s treasures for new specimens for their collections. Although Ruth was seventeen and Polly not quite fifteen, they had been such staunch, firm friends at school that the summer vacation seemed to draw the ties of friendship all the closer.
“Ruth always understands just what I mean,” said Polly. “Everybody else thinks I am too quick-spoken and changeable. But I’m not, truly I’m not; am I, Ruth?”