“It is an evil thing!” shrieked Dolores. Panic-stricken, she reverted to her old wood nymph tactics and bolted straight into the jungle, Patsy and Beatrice following wildly after.
“Dolores!” at last screamed Bee in desperation. “Wait for us!”
The shrill appeal checked the badly scared wood nymph’s headlong flight long enough for Bee and Patsy to come up with her. Breathless though she was, Bee’s brief terror had apparently taken wing. She was now smiling broadly.
“We’re a set of geese!” she exclaimed. “Do you know what our horrible monster is? I do. It’s nothing but a meek, harmless manatee!”
“What, then, is a manatee?” inquired Dolores, in tones that indicated doubt that so terrible a monster as she had just seen could possibly be harmless.
“Oh, it’s an animal something like a seal, only a lot larger, that lives in the sea. It eats nothing but plants and grass and is as harmless as a kitten. I’ve seen pictures of manatees, but never saw a real one before,” explained Bee. “The minute after we started to run, I guessed what it was we’d seen. They live in lagoons and the mouths of rivers that run into the sea and inlets like this. The poor thing was holding up its baby manatee for us to see and we never stopped to admire it!”
“Let’s go back and look at it,” said Patsy. “We’ve got to get out of this jungle as soon as ever we can. We’ll have to go back the way we came, I suppose. Auntie will be awfully cross with me for this. She’ll blame me for the whole business.”
“From here it is not so far to the jungle road,” informed Dolores. “I know the little path to it. That will be best for us to take, I believe.”
“All right,” acquiesced Bee, “only do let’s stop and rest a little first. That wild run of ours took most of my breath. There’s a nice, clean place under that big tree. A five-minutes’ stop there won’t do us any harm.”