“Madame Elva!” gasped Amy. “I would know her voice if—if I heard it in my dreams!”
“So it is,” breathed Jessie.
But she would not speak again until the selection was finished. Then she said:
“I hope mother and the other ladies get Madame Elva on that hospital program. And if we get on it, too, dear, won’t it be great?”
“I should say! Think of being able to say that we sang and recited on the same program with Madame Elva! Oh, my!”
Amy was always enthusiastic about anything she undertook. In the morning she was over at the Norwood house very early and in boating costume. The girls had a canoe on Lake Monenset and they knew pretty well how both to paddle and sail it. When they went down to the boatlanding belonging to the Norwood place a steady breeze ruffled the lake. It was, as Amy declared, “a gorgeous morning.”
“Tell you what, Jessie, honey,” said the flyaway. “Let’s have Bill get out the sail and step the mast for us. It is a fine sailing breeze. We can make Dogtown at a fast clip.”
Jessie was pleased with the proposal. They called the gardener’s boy and had him bring the leg-o’-mutton sail from the boathouse. The long canoe was rigged to carry two sails; but the girls never used but one. This Bill stepped forward, and while Jessie held the steering paddle, Amy got in amidships to tend sheet.
The canoe moved out from the landing sluggishly. Jessie had to paddle on both sides to push it into the wind. But when the canoe was out of the shelter of the shore, the first swoop of the breeze filled the canvas and almost yanked the sheet out of Amy’s hand.
“Who! Old Boreas almost had me that time,” cried the gay-hearted girl. “Now we’re speeding, Jess!”