"Oh, yes, Adam. How will it run? To assemble, at their armory,—that is the bank above the clam beds,—in uniform, with arms and accoutrements, an hour before low tide. When will that be? But never mind. And shall I tell father?" She glanced toward the hole scooped in the ground. "He will be glad to—but mercy on us, Adam, where is Tidda?"
She sighed and started to her feet. I laughed, and pointed along the shore.
"Stole away," I said. Tidda and the Sands girl were picking their way among the great pebbles of the shore, Tidda with light feet skipping from pebble to pebble, the Sands girl going more cautiously and clumsily.
Eve sighed again. "We may as well follow. There is no knowing what they will be up to next."
So I rose and we turned to follow, and there was Elizabeth Radnor not ten steps away, smiling and regarding us with friendly eyes. As she drew near her eyes looked gray-green, not hazel, calm and humorous and knowing. Perhaps they are of the changeable kind. I have seen changeable eyes before. I would like to know what thoughts lie behind those eyes to give them their peculiar light. And at a guess I think that Bobby would give something to know. But they were friendly eyes, and they gave you a look that was straight and true.
"Oh, Elizabeth,"—Eve has got that far with her, which is in her favor. I have never yet known Eve to be deceived in people—"Oh, Elizabeth, we have to go after Tidda, just along the shore. Will you come? Tidda leads us a chase. Her spirit of adventure will lead her into trouble."
Elizabeth laughed. We were descending the steep path to the shore.
"I'm afraid I had a spirit of adventure as great as Tidda's," she said; "fortunately no disaster happened to me, although I must have been rather a trial to my mother. And as to going into the water when I shouldn't—why, I was in the water all the time—whenever I could get in. You see the unhappy result. We were poor, you know; in what is called straitened circumstances. My father died when I was a little tot, and we never had a maid until a few years ago. You go on in your own way. It is pretty sure to be right."
I do not know whether Eve thought Elizabeth was referring to the path, but she turned and began to descend again.