“You are getting wee freckles on your nose, Jessie,” said Mrs. Norwood.
“Why worry?” demanded Amy. “You can never get as many as Hen wears—and her nose isn’t as big as yours.”
“It is by good luck, not good management, that you do not freckle, Amy Drew,” declared her chum. “I’ll take the shade hat.”
“Why not a sunbonnet?” scoffed Amy.
But Jessie laughed and ran out with her hat. It floated behind her, held by the two strings, as she raced her chum down to the boat landing. The Norwood boathouse sheltered several different craft, among others a motor-boat that Amy’s brother, Darrington Drew, owned. But Darry and his chum, Burd Alling, had lost their interest in the Water Thrush since they had been allowed to put into commission, and navigate themselves, the steam-yacht Marigold, which was a legacy to Darry from an uncle now deceased.
The girls got the new canoe out without assistance from the gardener or his helper. They were thoroughly capable out-of-door girls. They had erected the antenna for Jessie’s radio set without any help. Both were good boatmen—“if a girl can be a man,” to quote Amy—and they could handle the Water Thrush as well as the canoe.
They launched and paddled out from the shore in perfect form. The sun was scorching, but there was a tempering breeze. It was therefore cooler out toward the middle of the lake than inshore. The glare of the sun on the water troubled even the thoughtless Amy.
“Oh, aren’t you the wise little owl, Jess Norwood!” she cried. “To think of wearing a sun-hat! And here am I with nothing to shelter me from the torrid rays. I am going to burn and peel and look horrid—I know I shall! I’ll not be fit to go to Hackle Island—if we go.”
“Oh, we’re going, all right!”
“You’re mighty certain, from the way you talk. Has it been really settled? ‘There’s many a slip’ and all that, you know.”