"Well, now, who would have thought it? I regard this as a real streak of luck."
"What, Kitty Harvey?" Madeline exclaimed, in a tone of eager surprise. "Oh, I am so glad!" And a moment later the two girls were embracing each other with a warmth and an effusiveness that would have done justice to an Oriental greeting.
"I spied you from the other side of the way," Kitty Harvey said at length, tears of genuine pleasure shining in her eyes, "and I said to mamma, 'If that ain't Madeline Grover, then I'm the blindest coon that ever walked in shoe leather.'"
"Is your mother here?" Madeline queried, eagerly.
"We're all here, my dear, a regular family party, with sundry relations to keep things lively. But here comes the little mother, two hundred pounds of her, and as cheerful as ever."
"But when did you come?"
"Cast anchor this morning, my dear. That's our yacht out yonder, flying the stars and stripes."
"What, that? I thought she was a transatlantic liner."
"Well, I guess she is, or something nearly related to it. But you should talk to Dick; he knows her from stem to stern, and from the keel to the captain's bridge."
"Then you are here on a yachting cruise?"