“A light lunch! Excuse me. I know—crackers, pickles and olives. Never! We’ll go to the town delicatessen, sister mine!”
“Thank goodness there is one,” murmured Cora.
She hastened back to the bungalow. And then began a series of strenuous happenings.
Somehow trunks and suitcases were unpacked; somehow rooms were picked out, rejected, taken again, and finally settled on. Then, between the nibblings at the crackers and pickles Jack had despised, the girls settled down, and at last had time to admire the place they had selected for their Summer stay.
A woman had been engaged to open the bungalow for them, and she had provided most of the necessaries of life, aside from those the girls brought with them. Cora and her chums had been satisfied to have her attend to everything from buying food to providing an oil stove on which to cook it.
There were a number of conveniences at Crystal Bay. Stores were not out of reach, and supplies could be procured with little trouble. A trip across the bay brought one to the shores of a real village, with school house, post-office and other accessories of civilization. A trip down the bay opened into eel pots in August, bluefishing in September and deep sea fishing later on, when the Summer colonists had departed.
Very early in the morning after the arrival of the motor girls at Crystal Bay, house, tent and bungalow were deserted—it was all a matter of motor boat. Moored to the brand new dock, at Tangle Turn, a brand new motor craft heaved with the incoming waves and tugged at its ropes whenever a sufficiently strong motion of the water gave it excuse to attempt an escape.
This was the Chelton, the “up-to-datest” little-big motor boat possible to own or acquire, according to the verdict of the young men from Chelton who had just now passed judgment, and the wise decision of Cora and her girl friends who had actually bought the boat, after having taken a post-graduate course in catalogs and hardware periodicals, to say nothing of the countless interviews they had found it necessary to hold with salesmen and yacht agents.
They were all there, even Freda, who declared she ought to be busy with other matters, but that the call of the colony was too strong for her that one morning, at least.
“Of course we know how to run her,” insisted Cora to Ed, the latter having expressed doubt as to the girls’ ability to manage so important a craft. “Didn’t we run the Pet?”