“Look out!” laughed Belle. “When Cora begins calling names there is no telling when she will stop.”
“Don’t worry,” was Cora’s answer, as she stooped over to crank the motor. It started on the first turn and soon the Chelton was chugging a course over the sun-lit waters of Crystal Bay.
“Do you see anything of the boys?” asked Cora, as she turned to the others from her place at the steering wheel.
“No, there’s their boat—at least Jack’s apology for one—tied to the stake,” said Lottie. “Does that boat ever go out two days in succession, Cora?”
“I don’t believe it does,” answered Jack’s sister. “It was a sort of makeshift, anyhow. Jack only got her running because someone said it couldn’t be done—it was a sort of dare. But the poor old boat seems to suffer from some intermittent fever. It runs one day and rests the next.”
“And the Dixie—she’s resting, too,” went on Bess, as she looked down the bay to where Dray Ward’s fine racing craft was moored. “The boys are not around yet.”
“Probably sleeping,” murmured Belle. “The indolent creatures!”
“Folks who live in glass houses—and all the rest of it,” said Cora. “It’s nearly eleven, and we haven’t been long away from the breakfast table ourselves.”
“It’s a case of carrying coals to Newcastle; isn’t it?” asked Lottie, drying with her filmy handkerchief a drop of water on her dress.
“You mean the pot calling the kettle black,” laughed Cora. Lottie never could get her proverbs just right.