"Thank you so much!" said Roger, looking in through the window. "Empty compliments are all very well, but I think I might have been asked to supper."
He was hailed with a chorus of shouts, and stepping in through the window, drew up a stool and sat down by Hildegarde.
"What HAVE you been doing, children?" he asked, looking round at the four, who had now arrived at the smoking stage of dampness, each sending up his little pillar of cloud.
Four eager voices told him of the search and the finding, and he smiled quietly as he helped himself to jam.
"I wonder what you took me for!" he said, "I truly wonder. The boat went to bed at nine o'clock, with the rest of the children. I beg your pardon, Miss Grahame," he added, turning to Hildegarde with his kind, grave smile, "for naming you in company with this lawless crew of mine."
"Oh, please," cried Hildegarde, "I like to—I wish I were—" She stammered, and felt herself blushing in the furious way that makes a girl the most helpless creature in the world. She would have given her hand, she thought, to keep back the tide that surged up over throat and cheek and brow. "When there is nothing earthly to blush about, ninny!" she almost cried aloud.
But Bell came to the rescue. "She wishes she were much wiser than the rest of us, Roger, but she doesn't think she is, and I am really not so sure about it myself. That is the best part of her: she's just a girl."
"Just a girl!" said Roger, looking at Hildegarde; and he looked so kindly that poor Hildegarde blushed again.