And off Perce ran to summon his friend to their festivities.
The twins turned the cattle into the grass, and then began to make things ready for their camp and supper; keeping up all the time an incessant dialogue, which prevented them from hearing again the cries of the supposed loon, growing fainter and fainter on the distant waves.
Neither did Perce hear them as he hastened along the path in the gloomy hollow, and mounted the piazza steps. In the hall-door of the boarding-house, he was met by a tall girl of seventeen, with a fine brunette complexion, piercing dark eyes, and a high, thin, Roman nose.
Overawed a little by her rather imposing style of dress and features, Perce took off his cap, and begging her pardon, inquired for Oliver Burdeen.
"Burdeen? Oliver?" she queried. "Oh!" with a pleasant smile, "you mean Olly!"
"Yes," he replied. "We all call him Olly where he lives, but I wasn't sure he would be known by that name here."
"He isn't known by any other!" replied the young lady with a laugh. "He's about, somewhere; I believe he's always about, somewhere! Mrs. Merriman," she called to a lady in the parlor, "where's the ubiquitous Olly?"
"I don't know, Amy," replied the lady. "Didn't he go with the gentlemen in the yacht?"
Amy "almost thought he did"; yet it seemed to her she had seen him that afternoon; a position of uncertainty on the part of that young lady, which wouldn't have been highly flattering to the vanity of Master Burdeen, even if he hadn't been at that moment beyond the reach of flattery.
"Mrs. Murcher can tell you," she said, turning to walk back to the end of the hall. "She is here, in the dining-room."