Beatrice stared in astonishment.
"I don't quite understand," she said.
"My dear! I feared something improper was going on. A young man, not a relation, out alone on the water with two girls! That's the kind of thing we don't allow, in Northbury, Bee. Now, what's the matter?"
"Look," said Beatrice, "look! They are putting up the sail, and they are not doing it right. They oughtn't all three to stand up in the boat together. It will capsize! Oh, I must fly to them. Good-bye, Mrs. Butler. Mother would like to see you at tea, to-night. Good-bye, Miss Peters."
She rushed away, and the next moment was down on the quay. Three moments later she was speeding with swift long strokes across the harbor in her own beautifully appointed row-boat.
Her dress was of dark blue serge, with white collar and cuffs. Her hat was a simple sailor one. The exercise brought the color into her cheeks, and her big somewhat pathetic gray eyes were bright.
"There she goes!" exclaimed Miss Peters. "Never saw such a girl. Doesn't she handle her oars with a touch? Oh, of course she is off to the rescue of those poor bunglers. And I daresay they don't think her good enough to speak to."
"Good enough!" exclaimed Mrs. Butler. "She's twice too good for any one of them. Didn't her dress fit neat, Maria? Well, I hope she won't get let in by their fine ways. For my part, I'm not going to take any notice of the Bertrams. The way they behaved was past enduring. Not at homing when I called, and then leaving their cards on the day when I was at the bazaar. Highty-tighty, says I, who's Mrs. Bertram that she should look down on us in this fashion? Isn't the widow of a good honest butter merchant who paid his way, and left a comfortable fortune behind him, fit to associate with any lady of the land? Mrs. Bertram, indeed! A nice way she has treated us all. It isn't every newcomer we Northbury folks would take up. We hold ourselves high, that we do. Now, what's the matter, Maria?"
"We didn't hold ourselves high about Mrs. Bertram," replied Miss Peters. "It isn't fair to say that we did. We all rushed up to call before she had the carpets well down. I did say, Martha, and you may remember too that I said it, for you were helping me to the tail of the salmon at the time, and I remarked that there was little or nothing to eat on it, you'll remember that I said to you: 'let them put their carpets straight at least.' But you wouldn't—you were all agog to be off, when you saw that Mrs. Gorman Stanley had gone up there in her new bonnet, with the red and yellow poppies—the bonnet you know that she said she got from London."
"Which she didn't," snapped Mrs. Butler; "for I saw those identical poppies in Perry's shop on the quay. Well, well, Maria, I may have been a bit hasty in rushing after those who didn't want me, but the result would have been all the same. Maria, there's only one solution of the way we have been treated by that proud, stuck-up, conceited body. Maria, she doesn't pay her way."