“Quick!” commanded Amy, and the disgruntled Costello swarmed over the side of the canoe. “We can take in one more. Who is the nearest drowned?”
“I’m sitting in half a foot of water,” confessed the red-haired Shannon, grinning.
“A little soaking will do you good. I can guess who suggested this crazy venture,” Jessie said. “Come, Henrietta.”
“I need her to trim ship!” cried Charlie Foley.
“What do you want to trim your ship with—red, white and blue?” demanded Amy. “If that trough sinks I know you can swim, Charlie.”
The crowd would have had some difficulty in getting back to shore with the wind blowing as freshly as it did if the girls had not come along and, in relays, helped them all back.
“What Mrs. Shannon will say when she sees her two washtubs floating off like that, I don’t know,” sighed Henrietta, after they were all ashore.
“One of ’em’s sunk, so she can’t see it,” Micky Costello said calmly. “Maybe the other will go down. Don’t you big girls say anything and maybe she won’t find it out.”
Jessie and Amy had headed for Dogtown in the first place without any expectation of playing a life-saving part. Jessie thought they ought to see Mrs. Foley, who was fleshy and easy of disposition, and ask her about Henrietta’s visit. So they accompanied the freckle-faced little girl to the Foley house.
“I ain’t telling ’em all they can come to visit my island, Miss Jessie,” said the little girl. “But of course, the Foleys could come. Mrs. Blair and Bertha wouldn’t mind just them, of course. There’s only Mrs. Foley and Charlie and Billy and the baby and three more boys and—and—well, that’s all, only Mr. Foley. He wouldn’t want to come.”