Five o'clock was the time fixed for return. Had Joan come it would have been much later.
At tea-time Fred turned up, and it appeared that he meant to get off the return-row up the river. He had engaged a boatman to do it in his stead. Mary would still go, and though Mittie proudly said it did not matter, she wouldn't in the least mind being alone, Mary only smiled and held to her intention.
But long before this stage of proceedings everybody was tired—Mary and Mittie especially, the one of entertaining, the other of being entertained.
Mary had tried every imaginable thing she could think of to amuse the young guest, and every possible subject for talk. They seemed to have arrived at the end of everything, and it took all Mittie's energies to keep down, in a measure, her recurring yawns. Mary did her best, but she found Mittie far from interesting.
When at length they started for the riverside, Fred went with the two girls to see them off; and Mittie felt like a prisoner about to be released.
She was so eager to escape that she ran ahead of her companions towards the landing-place, and Mary dryly remarked in an undertone: "Mittie has had about enough of us, I think. How different she is from Joan! One would hardly take them for sisters."
Fred was too downhearted to answer. He had felt all day terribly hopeless.
Suddenly he started forward. "I say!—wait a moment!" he called.
A slight turn had brought them in full view of the small boat floating close under the bank, roped loosely to the shore, and of Mittie standing above, poised as for a spring. She was light and active, and fond of jumping. At the moment of Fred's shout she was in the very act. No boatman was within sight.