"It is perfectly disgraceful how you boys teach these girls slang," Mrs. Drew remarked with a sigh.
"Why, Mother!" cried Darry, his eyes twinkling, "they teach it to us. You accuse Burd an me wrongfully. We couldn't tell these girls a single thing."
This was at breakfast at the Norwood bungalow. After breakfast the young folks separated. But Jessie and Amy had no complaint to make about the boys. They had their own interests. This day they had agreed to explore the island with Nell Stanley as far as the hotel grounds.
They took Henrietta and Sally Stanley along, and carried a picnic lunch. The older girls were rather curious to see the extent of "Henrietta's domain," as Amy called it. The pastures included in the Hackle Island Golf Club grounds covered all the middle of the island, and consisted of hills and dells, all "up-and-down-dilly," Amy observed, and from a distance, at least, seemed very attractive.
Of course, they could not go fast with the two smaller girls along, although Henrietta seemed tireless.
"But Sally ain't a tough one, like me," declared the little girl who thought she was going to own an island. She approved of Sally Stanley very much, because the minister's little girl was dainty, and kept her dresses clean, and was soft-spoken. "I got to run and holler once in a while or I thinks I'm choking," confessed Henrietta. "But your mamma, Miss Jessie, says I'll get over that after a while. She says I'll go to school and learn a lot and that maybe I'll be as nice as Sally some day."
"I hope you will," said Jessie warmly.
"That's hardly to be expected," Henrietta rejoined in her old-fashioned way. "Sally was born that way. But I always was a tough one."