“Well, then, here we are.” Johnny took a seat. “Now we have two boats and there are three of us. The motor-boat won’t go, but—”
Suddenly he sprang to his feet. “You’d have a compass, wouldn’t you?”
“Ye-es,” the girl replied with evident reluctance, “but it—it’s out of order. That’s why I got lost.”
“Well, anyway,” Johnny said with forced cheerfulness, “now there are three of us. Two’s company and three’s a crowd. I always have liked crowds. Besides,” the corners of his mouth turned up, “you’ve got something of a cabin.”
“Oh, yes.” The girl seemed, for the moment, to forget that she was speaking to one who had knocked her beloved daddy out. “Yes, there is a cabin. There’s a small stove and—and some wood. There’s tea and some pilot biscuits.”
“A stove, wood, tea and pilot biscuits?” Suddenly MacGregor seized her and waltzed her about in a narrow circle. “Rusty, me child, you are an angel.”
A half hour later found them comfortably crowded into Rusty’s small cabin. They were sipping tea and munching hard round crackers.
“The fog’ll lift after a while,” MacGregor rumbled dreamily. “We lost our boat. That’s bad. But there’s marine insurance. That’s good. We’ll have another boat. I wonder,” he paused to meditate, “wonder what Blackie and the others are thinking by now.”
“And doing,” Johnny suggested uneasily.
“Yes, and doin’,” MacGregor agreed.