“Shadowy anyhow. She’s thin enough. But she’s nice. If only we can lay hold of that miserable little Nicky and wring out of him the story of the boat model.”
“Cara Burke!” exclaimed Babs, rebukingly. “You stop making fun of my adopted brother. Didn’t you say I should adopt him?”
“Looks right now as if he would be the adopted son of Captain Quiller,” went on Cara, for both girls were in that mood that made them feel like saying silly things and laughing at them, as if they were the very best jokes they had ever heard.
“I’m glad you have nothing more important to do than to drive me around, Cara,” Babs remarked as she jumped out of the car. This was Babs’ way of thanking her chum for her continuous attention.
“So am I,” chirped Cara. “Think what fun I’d miss if I did have something more important to do.”
But presently she was gone, and Babs was running up the little patched stone walk, a walk made of pieces of stone just scattered in the grass at step lengths, so that one always wanted to play a game as she raced along them. Babs called them her broken trail, and she always jumped hardest on the big pointed stone that looked like a gray shawl in the thick green grass.
She was almost happy. Things were promising to clear up. She and Cara were going to the lighthouse exactly at eight o’clock. It would still be daylight at that time, but Captain Quiller said Nicky would come then to light his lamp, so high up in the tower that the glow could be seen like a little candlelight’s flicker, to warn seamen away from the dangerous point of sand. Once touching that sand-bar a craft would be aground, and the light was to mark this danger and save it from such peril.
Babs, hurrying on, had not quite reached the porch of her own home now, but she could plainly see the inescapable Dora standing waiting for her.
And she held another letter in her hand!
“What?” exclaimed Babs, ready to roar at the humor of it, “not another letter, Dora?”