"I'm going to make pies, too," said Margy, and soon the two youngest children were busy playing in the sand.
Russ walked up and down the beach looking for odd shells, for he had started to make a collection of them. Rose remained on the sand, watching some men who were working on a motor boat. She saw that Mun Bun and Margy were all right, and the last she had heard from Laddie and Vi was when Laddie was trying to guess the answer to a riddle about seaweed. It was a riddle which Laddie had made up himself, and perhaps it was not as easy as some other riddle would have been.
At any rate, Laddie and Vi were talking about this riddle the last Rose heard them. She was thinking how nice it was to be at Grand View, and she was wondering if Captain Ben would ever find his lost watch when she was suddenly startled by a scream. That it came from one of the little Bunkers Rose knew at once, and her first glance was toward Mun Bun and Margy. They were still playing quietly on the sand.
Rose next looked for Laddie and Violet and, to her surprise, she saw them in a rowboat some distance from shore, and the rowboat was being pulled along by the motor craft on which the men had been working. Most unexpectedly Laddie and Vi were being ridden out on the broad bay!
"Oh, come back! Come back!" cried Rose, springing to her feet and waving her hands to her brother and sister. "Come back here!"
"We can't! We can't come back!" cried Laddie, and then he and Vi fell down in a huddled heap in the middle of the rowboat which was being pulled rapidly along by the motor boat.
CHAPTER XVII
THE RAGGED MEN
Russ Bunker, who had been walking along the shore gathering pretty shells, looked back as he heard Rose scream.
"What's the matter?" shouted Russ. Rose pointed to the rowboat out in the middle of the bay, in which could be seen Vi and Laddie. The two small Bunkers were clinging to one another, and were still being towed, in their boat, by the motor craft. They were not so very far from shore, but far enough to cause them to be frightened, and also to frighten Rose and Russ. As for Mun Bun and Margy, they were too small to be really worried, though they wondered why Laddie and Vi had gone off in a boat by themselves, especially having a motor boat pull them along.