“Oh, don’t be distressed,” consoled Betty. “Any of us might have made the same mistake. It was only an accident, Grace dear.”
“Well, I seem fated to have accidents lately. There was poor little Dodo——”
“Not your fault at all!” exclaimed Mollie, promptly. “I’ll not allow you to blame yourself for her accident. It was those motorists, if any-one, and I’m not sure they were altogether to blame. Anyhow, I’m sure Dodo will be cured after the operation.”
“I hope so,” murmured Grace.
The appetizing odor of bacon and eggs came from the little galley, mingled with the aromatic foretaste of coffee. Aunt Kate was busy inside. The girls were laughing out in the cabin, or on the lowered after-deck. It was the next morning—which makes all the difference in the world.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have a shower today,” observed Amy, musingly, as she looked up at the sky. A light fog hung over the river.
“Will you ever forget the awful shower that kept us in the deserted house all night?” asked Betty, as she arranged her hair. “I mean when we were on our walking trip,” she added, looking for a ribbon that had floated, like a rose petal, under her shelf-dresser.
“Oh, we’ll never get over that!” declared Mollie, who was industriously putting hairpins where they would be more serviceable. “And we couldn’t imagine, for the longest time, why the house should be left all alone that way.”
“Now I’m going to begin my lesson,” announced Grace, who, having gotten herself ready for breakfast, took up the book showing how various sailor knots should be made. With a piece of twine she tied “figure-eights,” now and then slipping into the “grannie” class; she made half-hitches, clove hitches, a running bowline, and various other combinations, until Amy declared that it made her head ache to look on.
The girls had breakfast, strolled about on shore for a little while, and then started off, intending to stop in Dunkirk, which town lay a little below them, to get some supplies, and replenish the oil and gasoline.