So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply:
‘They are merely conventional signs.’”
But Mabel interrupted him:
“‘Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank.’
So the crew would protest—‘that he’s bought us the best—
A perfect and absolute blank!’
“And now Daddy you come on and take your wheel because here comes a tug and it has three tows. It always scares me to death to meet one of those old tugs,” Mabel explained to Jane and Frances as she flopped down beside them. “They are absolutely unscrupulous—just like road hogs—always running into yachts on the sound. Whew! it’s good to see you kids again. Wouldn’t it be terrible if there would ever be a summer when some of us wouldn’t see each other?” she paused solemnly.
“You talk exactly as though you weren’t going to marry your fat Charlie in November,” teased Frances. “You will live in Lexington near Jane and that won’t be so bad, but how about me away out on the ranch? And it looks as if, in the course of time, that Ellen will come and live reasonably near Jane, too.”
“Well, my good spinster friend, Frances,” laughed Jane, “I reckon that as long as we are in the same boat we will have to start a tea-room or a poultry farm or some other stupid thing that unloved old maids do. Oh! the tragedy of being an old maid at twenty, and the pain made more terrible by the fact that we see the happiness of our friends so plainly.”