“Come on,” she cried. “She’s crazy, of course, but we’ve got to follow her, I suppose.”
Billie had almost reached the dock before they caught up with her. Then Laura reached out a hand and jerked her to stop.
“Billie,” she gasped, “be sensible for just a minute, please. Suppose it isn’t the boys? Then we won’t want to be waiting around as though we wanted somebody to speak to us!”
“Well, but I’m sure it is the boys. You said so yourself,” retorted Billie impatiently, her eyes fixed on the mysterious spot dancing and bobbing on the glistening water. “And they certainly won’t know what to do if there isn’t a soul here to meet them.”
“But we don’t want to meet them in our bathing suits,” said Vi, who, with Connie, had just come pantingly up. “It wouldn’t be just proper, would it?”
Billie looked at her doubtfully a moment, then reluctantly shook her head.
“No, I don’t suppose it would,” she admitted, adding with a stamp of her foot. “But I did want to be here to meet them.”
“Well, we can be, if we rush,” broke in Connie. “The boat won’t reach the dock for fifteen or twenty minutes anyway, because it’s still a long way off. We may be able to throw some clothes on and be back by that time.”
“‘Throw’ is right,” Laura said skeptically, but Billie was already racing off again in the direction of the cottage. With a helpless little laugh, the girls followed.
The boys would have declared it could not be done. But the girls proved that it could. They were panting when they reached the house, stopped just long enough to explain to the surprised Mrs. Danvers and then scurried upstairs, and with eager fingers tore off their bathing suits and substituted their ordinary clothes.