CHAPTER
4
AN UNWARRANTED ATTACK
“Now will you tell me what I did to deserve a crack like that?” Penny muttered as the door of the boathouse slammed behind Sara Ottman.
“Not a single thing,” Louise answered loyally. “She just rolled out from beneath that boat with a dagger between her teeth!”
“I guess I am a little prig, Lou.”
“You’re no such thing!” Louise grasped her arm and gave her an affectionate squeeze. “Come along and forget it. I never did like Sara Ottman anyhow.”
Penny allowed herself to be led away from the dock, but the older girl’s unkind remarks kept pricking her mind. Although occasionally in the past she had stopped for a few minutes at the Ottman place, she never before had spoken a dozen words to Sara. Nearly all of her business dealings had been with Burt Ottman, a pleasant young man who had painted her father’s sailboat that spring.
“I simply can’t understand it,” Penny mumbled, trudging along the shore with Louise. “The last time I saw Sara she spoke to me politely enough. I must have offended her, but how?”
“Oh, why waste any thought on her?” Louise scoffed.
“Because it bothers me. She mentioned the bridge dynamiting affair. Maybe it was my by-line story in the Star that offended her.”
“What did it say?” Louise inquired curiously. “I didn’t see the morning paper.”