I'd been lookin' around for a place to make for. Off over the trees toward the Sound was a flag-pole that I reckoned stood on some kind of a buildin' and there was a road runnin' that way.
"We'll mosey down towards that," says I; "but we could make better time, Cap'n, if you'd get your party down to light-weight marchin' order. Suppose you give the command for them to shed them cork jackets."
"Why, really, now," says he, lookin' over the crowd kind of helpless, "I haven't the faintest idea how to do it, y'know."
"Well, it's up to you," says I. "Make a speech to 'em."
Say, that was the dopiest bunch of kids I ever saw. They acted like they wa'n't more'n half alive, standin' there in pairs, as quiet as sheep, waitin' for the word. But that's the way they bring 'em up in these Homes, like so many machines, and they didn't know how to act any other way. Sadie saw it, and dropped down on her knees to gather in as many as she could get her arms around.
"Oh, you poor little wretches!" says she, beginnin' to sniffle.
"Cut it out, Sadie!" says I. "There ain't any time for that. Unbuckle them belts. Turn to, Cap, and get on the job. You're in this."
As soon as Woodie showed 'em what was wanted, though, they skinned themselves out of those canvas sinkers in no time at all. We left the truck in the road, and with the English gent for drum-major, Sadie in the middle, and me playin' snapper on the end, we starts for the flag-pole. I thought maybe it might be a hotel; but when we got where the road opened out of the woods to show us how near the Sound we was, I sees that it's a yacht club, with a lot of flags flyin' and a whole bunch of boats anchored off. About then we felt the first wet spots.
"They've got to take us into that club-house," says Sadie.
We'd got as far as the gates, one of these fancy kind, with a hood top over the posts, like the roof of a summer-house, when the sprinkler was turned on in earnest. Woodie was gettin' rain-drops on his new uniform, and he didn't like it.