“Breck!” called Jane to the sailor, “you put over the sea ladder and we’ll row around to starboard and take on our middle-aged passengers.”
“Middle-aged passengers nothing,” shrieked Mabel. “You just hold the dinghy steady and we’ll get over here. As if I wasn’t doing this long before you were born!”
“Well, doesn’t that prove your middle age?” teased Frances.
“I’d drop this little grip on your head, Captain Kidd, if I wasn’t afraid I’d upset my fellow sufferer, Mabel,” announced Ellen, as she handed the little grip that held their nighties down to Frances. “I am so thoughtful, none of you remembered that you ought to have toothbrushes and combs if we are going to stay on shore tonight. How would you get on in this world without useful me to think about everything for you?”
“Be sure to allow enough rope for the drop in the tide,” Jane cautioned Frances as she made the painter fast to a big iron ring sunk in the dock.
“Plain Jane, now you just hush up. I’d like to know who it was that tied the dinghy at Newport the time we came back from the movies and found the poor thing standing on its stern with its nose up in the air?”
“Let’s go to the post office first, and see if there is any mail for us at general delivery,” suggested Ellen. “Then we can set about the search for our little pal Betty.”
Just as the girls were going into the post office, a hurrying girl ran into them. “Pardon—well of all things!” she cried.
“Why, Betty, what luck. Why didn’t you knock us down?”
“What fun to see you again,” they all said at once and drew amused smiles from the group in the post office.