Turning her head, Penny glimpsed her chum, a chubby silhouette in the moonlight. Louise, warmly dressed, already was comfortably established in one of the small sailing boats tied up at the wharf.
“Time you’re arriving,” she said accusingly as Penny tossed the sail bag into her hands. “You promised to meet me here at eight o’clock. It’s at least eight-thirty now.”
“Sorry, old dear.” Penny leaped nimbly aboard and with practiced fingers began to put up the mainsail. “After I ’phoned you, I got hung up at home. Dishes and all that sort of thing. Then Dad delayed me ten minutes while he lectured on the undesirability of daughter taking a moonlight sail.”
“I gather you gained the better of the argument,” Louise grinned. “Mother made me agree to wear a life-preserver. Imagine! And there’s barely enough wind stirring to whiff us across the river.”
For many years Penny and Louise had been chums. Students at Riverview High School, they enjoyed the same sports, particularly swimming and sailing. The little mahogany dinghy, appropriately named “Pop’s Worry,” was owned by Penny’s father, Anthony Parker, editor of Riverview’s most enterprising newspaper, the Star.
Together with Mrs. Maud Weems, a housekeeper who had cared for Penny since her mother’s death, he never felt entirely easy when the girls were on the river at night. Nevertheless, Penny was an excellent sailor and rather gloried in the record that her boat had overturned only once during the past season.
“All set?” she asked Louise, casting off the ropes one by one.
As Penny shoved the boat away from the dock, the flapping sail stiffened to the breeze. Louise ducked her head to avoid the swinging boom.
Bill Evans, watching from shore, called a friendly warning: “If you’re planning to sail down river, better not get too close to Thompson’s bridge! The new regulations say seventy-five feet.”
“We’ll give it a wide berth,” responded Penny. She sailed the boat out through the slip into the main channel of the Big Bear river. When well beyond the dock she commented sadly: “Poor old Bill. Always giving advice. Guess he can’t help it.”