The launch dipped her way past Nobbs Island, with its squatty lighthouse, and Phebe turned the launch toward the Head.
“There’s the place that fellow lives,” said Toby, nodding at a fine new stone-and-shingle house on the point. “The fellow I had the scrap with, I mean.”
“It’s a lovely house,” said Phebe. “I suppose they have lots of money, don’t you?”
“Slathers, I guess. He’s a pill. Can’t run that launch any more than Mr. Murphy can.” (Mr. Murphy was Phebe’s parrot, and, while he had been through some nautical experiences, he was naturally no navigator!) “He didn’t do a thing to her paint when he bumped into the float.” Toby chuckled. “And wasn’t he peeved with me!”
“I guess you were horribly superior and nasty,” said Phebe. “You can be, you know.”
“Oh, well, I hate fellows to put on a lot of airs just because their folks have money,” grumbled Toby. “The way he talked to me, you’d have thought I was a hunk of dirt.”
“Was he nice looking?” asked Phebe.
“Oh, I suppose you’d call him that. Sort of a pretty boy, with his hair all slicked back like it was varnished. It didn’t look so fine when he came out of the water, though!”
“That was a horrid thing to do, Toby.” But she smiled as she said it.
“I didn’t do it, sis. He stumbled—sort of—and went over backwards, and I went with him. You ought to have seen the way he scrambled out of there when he saw me coming after him! Say, we might run in to their landing and collect that ninety-nine cents, eh?”