"PINNED!"
How his heart did beat as he looked on the merry gathering, a large part of whom he had known "all his born days!"
But there was a side door opening from that dining-room on the long piazza which Mrs. Kinzer had added to the old Morris mansion, and Dick's hand was on the knob of that door almost before he knew it.
Then he was out on the road to the landing, and in five minutes more he was vigorously rowing the "Jenny" out through the inlet toward the bay.
His heart was not beating unpleasantly any longer, but as he shot out from the narrow passage through the flags and saw the little waves laughing in the cool, dim starlight, he suddenly stopped rowing, leaned on his oars, gave a sigh of relief, and exclaimed:
"Dar! I's safe now. I aint got to say a word to nobody out yer. Wonder 'f I'll ebber git back from de 'cad'my an' kitch fish in dis yer bay? Sho! Course I will. But goin' away's awful!"
Dab Kinzer thought he had never known Jenny Walters to appear so well as she looked that evening; and he must have been right, for good Mrs. Foster said to Annie:
"What a pleasant, kindly face your new friend has! You must ask her to come and see us. She seems quite a favorite with the Kinzers."
"Have you known Dabney long?" Annie had asked of Jenny a little before that.
"Ever since I was a little bit of a girl, and a big boy seven or eight years old pushed me into the snow."