“Come, now, Kate, don’t be foolish. You didn’t suppose I’d let you run away with me, did you?”
“I might go if you didn’t let me, Mr. Frank. Girls do lots of things now that they didn’t use to do. Mamma says so; and she’s glad I’m going to have more chances at something or other—I forget what—than she had when she was little.”
“At grammar, perhaps, Kate. Grammar is good for little girls—keeps them out of mischief.”
“There, now!” cried Kate, making a mischievous dash at Frank’s ear, and missing it. She hit his straw hat with a force that sent it careering, helped on by the strong sea-breeze, over the wet sands, along which they were driving. “See how your hat likes going to sea all alone, sir, before you start,” laughed Kate; while Frank sprang down, and went in hot pursuit of his hat.
Kate clapped her hands, and shouted encouraging words to Frank as he made frantic endeavors to catch it. The hat seemed like a hunted thing, driven on from point to point, until reaching a creek running down from the salt meadows, it rolled airily into it, and went sailing off slowly toward the sea.
“Stop it! stop it!” shouted Frank to Hugo, who drove ahead of it, and stopped the carriage midway in the stream; while Kate, getting down on the carriage steps, fished it out with the handle of her parasol, thereby saving Frank from getting his feet wet.
“Saved by a girl!” laughed Kate, when they had driven to land and Frank was again by her side.
“Set adrift by a girl!” exclaimed Frank, who was really in a bad humor at having his hat wet and dripping, so that he could not put it upon his head.
“Hang it up to dry,” suggested Kate, offering the point of her parasol to hoist it on in the sun.
Frank tied it on, and telling Hugo not to hurry, so that it might have a chance to be wearable by the time they reached the brown house, they turned toward it.