"Why not take a walk about the country?" he asked. "I guess we have seen all there is to be seen here. Come on, everybody. I want to get a bigger appetite for lunch."
"All right; where shall we go?" Betty agreed readily. "Your aunt must have told you about this part of the world, Mollie. Where can we find excitement?"
"Well, there is the summer colony at the other end of the island," Mollie began doubtfully. "But it is rather a long way off. The steamer touches there from here."
"Too far to go before lunch," Mrs. Irving said.
The party spent the rest of the time until one o'clock visiting the wharf and roaming the country in the immediate vicinity of the pretty bungalow.
True to her promise, Betty turned out at the appointed time a panful of the most appetizing biscuits, and let it be said here that the boys did them full justice—to say nothing of the girls.
It was well on toward three o'clock before the girls had changed their morning middies and skirts for dainty afternoon dresses, and had made all other necessary preparations for a trip to town. Mrs. Irving declined to go, saying she wished to write letters.
It was in the best of spirits that the party of young people stood on the end of the dock, waiting to hail the little steamer as it chug-chugged its way from the summer colony at the far end of Pine Island to the mainland.
When finally it did come in sight, the girls and the boys found themselves convulsed with laughter. If the shabby little craft had appeared grotesque in the mist of the night before, how much more forlorn did it look in the full, dazzling glare of the sun! As it came nearer they saw that the decks were crowded with people, the gay dresses of the girls mingling with the white flannel trousers and dark coats of the men.
"It's a wonder," said Frank, "that with all that crowd of people paying good money to be towed ashore, they couldn't get something a little more modern. My! it looks as if it had come out of the ark."