Kitabı oku: «The Corner House Girls Under Canvas», sayfa 7

CHAPTER XV – TWO GIRLS IN A BOAT – TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG!

“Oh, Dot! do come here. Did you ever see such a funny thing in all your life?”

Tess Kenway was just as earnest as though the discovery she had made was really of great moment. The two bare-legged girls were on the sands below the tent colony of Willowbend, and the tide was out.

The receding waves had just left this wet flat bare. Here and there the sand still dimpled to the heave of the tide, and little rivers of water ran into the hollows and out again.

“What is the matter, Tess?” asked Dot, wonderingly.

“See!”

Tess pointed down at her feet – where the drab, wet sand showed lighter-colored under the pressure of her weight.

“What is it?” gasped the amazed Dot.

There was a tiny round hole in the sand – just like an ant hole, only there was no “hill” thrown up about it. As Tess tip-tilted on her toes to bring more pressure to bear near the orifice in the sand, a little fountain of water spurted into the air – shot as though from a fairy gun buried in the sand.

“Goodness!” gasped Dot again. “What is that?”

“That’s what I say,” responded Tess. “Did you ever see the like?”

“Oh! here’s another,” cried Dorothy, who chanced to step near a similar vent. “See it squirt, Tess! See it squirt!”

“What kind of a creature do you suppose can be down there?” asked the bigger girl.

“It – it can’t be anything very big,” suggested Dot. “At least, it must be awfully narrow to get down through the little hole, and pull itself ’way out of sight.”

This suggestion certainly opened a puzzling vista of possibilities to the minds of both inland-bred girls. What sort of an animal could possibly crawl into such a small aperture – and yet throw such a comparatively powerful stream of water into the air?

They found several more of the little air-holes. Whenever they stamped upon the sand beside one, up would spring the fountain!

“Just like the books say a whale squirts water through its nose,” declared Tess, who had rather a rough-and-ready knowledge of some facts of natural history.

A man with a basket on his arm and a four-pronged, short-handled rake in his hand, was working his way across the flats; sometimes stooping and digging quickly with his rake, when he would pick something up and toss it into his basket.

He drew near to two Corner House girls, and Dot whispered to Tess:

“Do you suppose he’d know what these holes are for? You ask him, Tess.”

“And he’s digging out something, himself. Do you suppose he’s collecting clams? Ruth says clams grow here on the shore and folks dig them,” Tess replied.

“Let’s ask about the holes,” determined Dot, who was persistent whether the cause was good or bad.

The two girls approached the clam-digger, hand in hand. Dot hugged tight in the crook of one arm her Alice-doll.

“Please, sir,” Tess ventured, “will you tell us what grows down under this sand and squirts water up at us through such a teeny, weeny hole?”

The man was a very weather-beaten looking person, with his shirt open at the neck displaying a brawny chest. He smiled down upon the girls.

“How’s that, shipmet?” he asked, in a very husky voice. “Show me them same holes.”

The sisters led the way, and the very saltish man followed. It was not until then that Tess and Dot noticed that one of his legs was of wood, and he stumped along in a most awkward manner.

“Hel-lo!” growled the man, seeing the apertures in the sand. “Them’s clams, an’ jest what I’m arter. By your lief – ”

He struck the rake down into the sand just beyond one of the holes and dug quickly for half a minute. Then he tossed out of the hole he had dug a nice, fat clam.

“There he be, shipmets,” declared the clam-digger, who probably had a habit of addressing everybody as “shipmate.”

“Oh – but – did he squirt the water up at us, sir?” gasped Dot.

The wooden-legged man grinned again and seized the clam between a firm finger and thumb. When he pinched it, the bivalve squirted through its snout a fine spray.

“Oh, mercy!” exclaimed Tess, drawing back.

“But – but how did he get down into the sand and only leave such a tiny hole behind him?” demanded Dot, bent upon getting information.

“Ah, shipmet! there ye have it. I ain’t a l’arned man. I ain’t never been to school. I went ter sea all my days till I got this here leg shot off me and had to take to wearin’ a timber-toe. I couldn’t tell ye, shipmets, how a clam does go down his hole an’ yet pulls the hole down arter him.”

“Oh!” sighed Dot, disappointedly.

“It’s one o’ them wonders of natur’ ye hear tell on. I never could understand it myself – like some ignerant landlubbers believin’ the world is flat! I know it’s round, ’cos I been down one side o’ it an’ come up the other!

“As for science, an’ them things, shipmets, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout ’em. I digs clams; I don’t pester none erbout how they grows – ”

And he promptly dug another and then a third. The girls watched him, fascinated at his skill. Nor did the “peg-leg” seem to trouble him at all in his work.

“Please, sir,” asked Tess, after some moments, “how did you come to lose your leg – your really truly one, I mean?”

“Pi-rats,” declared the man, with an unmoved countenance. “Pi-rats, shipmet – on the Spanish Main.”

“Oh!” breathed both girls together. Somehow that expression was faintly reminiscent to them. Agnes had a book about pirates, and she had read out loud in the evenings at the sitting-room table, at the old Corner House. Tess and Dot were not aware that “the Spanish Main” had been cleared of pirates, some years before this husky-voiced old clam-digger was born.

The clam-digger offered no details about his loss, and Tess and Dot felt some delicacy about asking further questions. Besides, Tom Jonah came along just then and evinced some distaste for the company of the roughly dressed one-legged man. Of course, he could not dig clams in his best clothes, as Tess pointed out; but Tom Jonah had confirmed doubts about all ill-dressed people. So the girls accompanied the dog back towards the tents.

The big girls had been out in the boat and Ruth had left Agnes to bring up the oars and crab nets, as well as to moor the boat, while she hastened to get dinner.

The tide being on the turn they could not very well pull the boat up to the mooring post; but there was a long painter by which it could be tied to the post. Agnes, however, carried the oars up to the tent and then forgot about the rest of her task as she dipped into a new book.

Tess and Dot came to the empty boat and at once climbed in. Tom Jonah objected at first. He ran about on the sand – even plunged into the water a bit, and put both front paws on the gunwale.

If ever a dog said, “Please, please, little mistresses, get out of the boat!” old Tom Jonah said it!

But the younger Corner House girls paid no attention to him. They went out to the stern, which was in quite deep water, and began clawing overboard with the crab nets. With a whine, the dog leaped into the craft.

Now, whether the jar the dog gave it as he jumped into the boat, or his weight when he joined the girls in the stern, set the cedar boat afloat, will never be known. However, it slid into the water and floated free.

“We can catch some crabs, too, maybe, Tess,” Dot said.

Neither of them noticed that the oars were gone, but had they been in the boat, Tess or Dot could not have used them – much. And surely Tom Jonah could not row.

They did not even notice that they were afloat until the tide, which was just at the turn, twisted the boat’s nose about and they began drifting up the river.

“Oh, my, Dot!” gasped Tess. “Where are we going?”

“Oh-oo-ee!” squealed Dot, raking wildly with one of the nets. “I almost caught one.”

“But we’re adrift, Dot!” cried Tess.

The younger girl was not so much impressed at first. “Oh, I guess they’ll come for us,” she said.

“But Ruth and Aggie can’t reach us – ’nless they swim.”

“Won’t we float ashore again? We floated out here,” said Dot.

She refused to be frightened, and Tess bethought her that she had no right to let her little sister be disturbed too much. She was old enough herself, however, to see that there was peril in this involuntary voyage. The tide was coming in strongly and the boat was quickly passing the bend. Before either Tess or Dot thought to cry out for help, they were out of sight of the camp and there was nobody to whom to call.

Tom Jonah had crouched down in the stern, with his head on his paws. He felt that he had done his duty. He had not allowed the two small girls to go without him on this voyage. He was with them; what harm could befall?

“I – I guess Alice would like to go ashore, Tess,” hesitated Dot, at last, having seized her doll and sat down upon one of the seats. The boat was jumping a good deal as the little waves slapped her, first on one side and then on the other. Without anybody steering she made a hard passage of it.

“I’d like to get ashore myself, child,” snapped Tess. “But I don’t see how we are going to do it.”

“Oh, Tess! are we going to be carried ’way out to sea?”

“Don’t be a goosey! We’re going up the river, not down,” said the more observant Tess.

“Well, then!” sighed Dot, relieved. “It isn’t so bad, is it? Of course, we’ll stop somewhere.”

“But it will soon be dinnertime,” said her sister. “And I guess Ruth and Aggie won’t know where we’ve gone to.”

In fact, nobody about the tent colony had noticed the cedar boat floating away with the two girls in it – to say nothing of the dog!

CHAPTER XVI – THE GYPSIES AGAIN

When Ruth shouted to Agnes from the kitchen, where she was frying crabs, to call the children, Agnes dropped the book she had been reading and remembered for the first time that she had neglected to tie the boat.

“Oh, Ruth!” she shrieked. “See what I’ve done!”

Ruth came to the opening in the front of the tent, flushed and disheveled, demanding:

“Well, what? This old fat snaps so!”

“The boat!” cried Agnes.

Ruth stared up and down the shore. There were other boats drawn up on the sand and a few moored beyond low-water mark; but their boat was not in sight.

“Have you let it get away, Agnes Kenway?” Ruth demanded.

“Well! you don’t suppose I went down there and pushed it off, do you?”

“This is no laughing matter – ”

“I guess I – I’m not laughing,” gulped Agnes. “It – it’s go-o-one! See! the tide is flowing in and I forgot to tie it.”

She was a little mixed here; it was the boat she had forgotten to tie.

“So,” murmured Ruth; “if the boat had been tied, the tide wouldn’t have carried it away,” and she had no intention of punning, either! “Now what shall we do? That boat cost seventy-five dollars, the man said.”

“Oh, Ruthie!”

“What will Mr. Howbridge say?”

“Oh, Ruthie!”

“No use crying about it,” said the oldest Corner House girl, with decision. “That won’t help.”

“But – but it’s gone out to sea.”

“Nonsense! The tide has taken it up the river. It’s gone round the bend. I hope it won’t be smashed on the rocks, that’s all. We must go after it.”

“How?” asked the tearful Agnes.

“Get another boat, of course. But let’s eat. The children will be hungry, and – My goodness! the crabs are burning up!” and she ran back into the tent. “Get Tess and Dot, and tell them to hurry!” she called from inside.

But Tess and Dot were not to be found. The beach just then was practically deserted. It was the dinner hour and the various campers all had the sort of appetites that demands meals served promptly on time.

Agnes ran to the other tents in Camp Willowbend; but her small sisters were not with any of the neighbors. It was strange. They had been forbidden to go out of sight of their own tent when neither Ruth nor Agnes was with them; and Tess and Dot were remarkably obedient children.

“I certainly do not understand it,” Ruth said, when Agnes brought back the news.

At that moment a shuffling step sounded outside the tent and a husky voice demanded:

“Any clams terday, lady? Fresh clams – jest dug. Ten cents a dozen; two-bits for fifty; half a dollar a hundred. Fresh clams!”

“Oh!” cried Agnes, springing to the tent entrance so suddenly that the wooden-legged clam-man started back in surprise. “Oh! have you seen my sisters anywhere on the beach?”

“Hel-lo!” growled the startled man. “I dunno ’bout thet thar, shipmet. What kind o’ sisters be they?”

“Two little girls,” said Ruth, eagerly, joining Agnes at the opening. “One of them carried a doll in her arms. She is dark. The bigger one is fair.”

The saltish old fellow chuckled deep in his hairy throat. “Guess I seen ’em, shipmets,” he said. “Them’s the leetle gals that didn’t know clam-holes.”

“Well! what became of them?” demanded the impatient Agnes.

“Why – I dug ’em, shipmet, an’ they air in this i-den-ti-cal basket now,” declared the clam-digger.

“Well!” gasped Agnes, behind her hand. “Maybe the children didn’t know clam-holes; but he doesn’t know beans!”

Ruth asked again: “We mean, what became of the girls, sir?”

“I couldn’t tell ye, shipmet. D’ye want any clams?” pursued this man of one idea. “Ten cents a dozen; two-bits for – ”

“I’ll buy some clams – yes,” cried Ruth, in some desperation. “But tell us where you last saw our sisters, sir?”

“How many you want, shipmet?” demanded the quite unmoved old fellow.

“Two!” cried Agnes. “There were only two of them. Two little girls – Oh!”

Ruth had pinched her, and now said, calmly: “Please count out a hundred for us, sir. Here is fifty cents. And please tell us where you saw our little sisters?”

“I seed two small gals, shipmet, down on the flats yonder,” said the clam digger, setting down his basket and squatting with the wooden leg stretched out before him. He began to busily count the clams onto the little platform before the tent.

“Where did they go, sir?” asked Ruth.

“I didn’t take no pertic’lar notice of ’em, shipmet. They had a dratted dog with them – ”

“Oh! Tom Jonah is with them. Then they can’t be lost,” gasped Agnes.

“Las’ time I ’member of cockin’ me eye at ’em,” declared the old clam digger, “they was inter a boat right down here below this tent. The dog was with ’em.”

He counted out the last clam, took his fifty cents, and departed. The two older Corner House girls looked at each other. Agnes was very white.

“Do – do you suppose they drifted away in the boat?” she whispered.

“I expect so,” agreed Ruth. “Come on, Ag. We’ll go up beyond the bend and see if we can sight the boat.”

“Oh! if they fall overboard – ”

“Tom Jonah would bring them both ashore if they did, I believe,” said Ruth, though her voice shook a little. “Do you want something to eat before you go?”

Agnes looked at her scornfully. “I don’t ever want to eat again if Dot and Tess aren’t found,” she sobbed. “Come on!”

“We’ll take something along to eat, if you don’t want to eat here,” Ruth said, sensibly. “The children will be hungry enough when we find them, you may be sure.”

“If we find them,” suggested the desperate Agnes.

“Don’t talk like a goose, Ag!” exclaimed the older sister. “Of course we’ll find them. They’ve only drifted away.”

“But you said yourself the boat might be smashed against the rocks.”

“Tom Jonah’s with them,” said Ruth, confidently. “He could live in the water altogether, you know. Don’t be worried about the children being drowned – Oh, Agnes!”

The change in her sister’s voice startled Agnes, who had gone into the back part of the tent. She ran out to where Ruth was wrapping the fried soft-shell crabs in a sheet of brown paper.

Ruth was staring through the open flap of the tent. Outside, about where the clam digger had stood a few moments before, was the tall, scarred-faced Gypsy tramp that they had seen at the nomads’ camp the day they came to Pleasant Cove!

“Oh, Ruth!” echoed Agnes, coming to Ruth’s side.

But the older sister quickly recovered her self-possession. Her first thought was:

“If Tom Jonah were only here!”

Ruth went to the door. The man leered at her and doffed his old cap.

“Good day, little lady,” he said. “She remember me – Big Jim – heh?”

“I remember you,” Ruth said, shortly.

“Ver’ proud,” declared the Gypsy, bowing again.

“What do you want?” asked the oldest Corner House girl, with much more apparent courage than she really felt.

“You remember Zaliska – heh?” asked the man, shrewdly.

“I remember her,” said Ruth.

“Little lady seen Zaliska since that day – heh?”

“What do you want to know for?” demanded Ruth, puzzled, yet standing her ground. She remembered in a flash all her suspicions regarding the young girl who masqueraded as the Gypsy Queen.

“Zaliska come here, heh?” said the man, doggedly, and with something besides curiosity in his narrow eyes.

“I don’t know why I should tell you if she had been here,” declared Ruth, while Agnes clung to her arm in fear.

“The little lady would fool Big Jim. No! We want find Zaliska.”

“Don’t come here for her,” said Ruth, sharply. “She’s not here.”

“But she been here – heh?” repeated the fellow. “She come here like she was dressed at the camp – heh? Then she go away different – heh?”

Ruth knew well enough what he meant. He hinted that the masquerading girl had come here to see Ruth, and discarded her queen’s garments and slipped away in her own more youthful character.

“I’m not sure that I know what you mean,” she said to the evil-faced man. “But one thing I can tell you – and you can believe it. I have not seen Zaliska since that day we girls came by your camp.”

“Ha! she come here to see you – ”

“No. She went to the hotel and to a friend’s house in the village,” said Ruth, “asking for me. I did not see her. She has not come here.”

“Huh!” grunted the man, and backed away, doubtfully.

“Now we are busy and you must not trouble us any more,” declared Ruth, hurriedly. “Come, Agnes!”

“He’ll come in the tent and search it,” whispered Agnes, in her sister’s ear.

“I will speak to Mr. Stryver. He is here to-day,” said Ruth, mentioning a neighbor in the camp.

“Big Jim,” as the Gypsy called himself, had backed away from the tent, but he watched the departing girls with lowering gaze. At Mr. Stryver’s tent Ruth halted long enough to tell the gentleman to keep his eye on the Gypsy man who was hanging about the camp.

“The women were here to sell baskets and such like truck while you girls were off crabbing, this morning,” said Mrs. Stryver. “It gives me the shivers to have those folks around. I think we ought to have these tent camps policed.”

“I’ll ’tend to this fellow,” promised Mr. Stryver, who was a burly man, and not afraid of anything.

Ruth hurried Agnes away toward the bend without another word.

“Why didn’t you tell them Tess and Dot were lost?” asked Agnes, gulping down a sob.

“I don’t want anybody to know it, if we can help,” returned Ruth. “It just looks as though we didn’t take sufficient care of them.”

“It – it was all my fault,” choked Agnes. “If I had tied the boat as you told me – ”

“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is,” said Ruth, quickly. “Or, if it is anybody’s fault! We don’t want folks to say that the Corner House girls from Milton don’t know enough to take care of each other while they are under canvas.”

CHAPTER XVII – ON WILD GOOSE ISLAND

“My!” Tess gasped, sitting in the stern of the drifting boat, “how fast the shores go past, Dot! We’re going up the river awfully quick.”

“And so j-j-jerky!” exclaimed her sister, clinging to the Alice-doll.

“You aren’t really afraid, are you, Dot?”

“No-o. Only for Alice. She’s always been weakly, you know, since that awful time she got buried alive,” said Dot, seriously. “And if she should get wet and catch her death of cold – ”

“But you mustn’t drop her overboard,” warned Tess.

“Do you s’pose I would, Tess Kenway?” demanded Dot, quite hurt by the suggestion.

“If she did fall overboard, Tom Jonah would save her, of course,” went on Tess.

“Oh! don’t you say such things,” cried Dot. “And do, please, stop the boat from jerking so!”

“I – I guess it wants to be steered,” Tess said.

The tiller ropes were at hand and Tess had observed Ruth and Agnes use them. She began experimenting with them and soon got the hang of using the rudder. But as the boat was propelled, only by the tide, it would “wabble.”

Tom Jonah watched all the small girls did with his keen eyes. But he scarcely moved. The boat floated on and on. Tess did not know how to work the boat ashore – indeed, caught as the craft was in the strong tide-rip, it would have taken considerable exertion with the oars to have driven it to land.

There chanced to be no other boats beyond the bend on this day. On either hand there were farms, but the houses were too far from the shores for the dwellers therein to notice the plight of the two small girls and the big dog in the bobbing cedar boat.

The shores at the river’s edge were wooded for the most part, as was the long and narrow island in the middle of the river, not far ahead. This latter was called Wild Goose Island, as Tess and Dot knew.

“Maybe the boat will go ashore there,” said Dot, more cheerfully.

“There are berries on that island,” cried Tess. “Only they were not ripe when we were there last week.” She was beginning to feel hungry; it was past midday.

“But we can’t walk back to the tent from there,” objected Dot.

“No-o,” admitted Tess. “It’ll be land, just the same!”

But the tide swept the cedar boat out from the lower end of the island and up the northern channel. It was this fact that hid the drifting boat from the anxious eyes of Ruth and Agnes when they came around the bend, expecting to see the missing craft. The island hid it.

Wild Goose Island was more than half a mile long. In the channel where the boat floated, the current of the river and the inflowing tide began to battle.

There were eddies that seized the boat and swept it in circles. The surface of the channel was rippled by small waves. The boat bobbed every-which-way, for Tess could not control the rudder.

“Oh, dear me!” gasped Dot. “I – I am afraid my Alice-doll will be sick. Do – don’t you s’pose we can get ashore, Tess?”

But Tess did not see how they could do that, although the boat was now and then swept very close to the shore of the island.

The island was a famous picnicking place; but there were no pleasure seekers there to-day. The shore seemed deserted as the girls were swept on by the resistless tide.

Suddenly Dot stood right up and squealed – pointing at the island. Tom Jonah lifted his head and barked.

“There’s somebody, Tess!” declared Dot.

The bigger Corner House girl had seen the face break through the fringe of bushes on the island shore. It was a dark, beautiful face, and it was a girl’s.

“Oh! oh! Let’s call her,” gasped Tess. “She’ll help us.”

The two small Kenways had a strong belief in the goodness of humanity at large. They expected that anybody who saw their plight would come to their rescue if possible.

For fully a minute, however, the girl in the bushes of Wild Goose Island did not come out into the open. Tess and Dot shouted again and again, while Tom Jonah lifted up his head and bayed most mournfully.

If the girl on the island did not want general attention attracted to the place, it behooved her to come out of concealment and try to pacify the drifting trio in the cedar boat.

Her face was very red when she reappeared in an open place on the shore. The distance between her and the boat, which was now caught in a small eddy, was only a few yards.

“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded, in rather a sharp tone.

“We – we can’t stop the boat,” responded Tess.

“We want to get ashore,” added Dorothy,

“How did you get out there?” asked the strange girl. She was older than Ruth, and although she was very pretty, Tess and Dot were quite sure they did not like her – much!

“We got in it, and it floated away with us,” said Tess.

“Where from?” asked the girl on shore.

“Oh! ’way down the river. ’Round that turn. We live at Willowbend Camp with Ruth and Aggie.”

“Ruth Who?” the other demanded, sharply.

“Our sister, Ruth Kenway,” said Tess.

The girl on the island was silent for a moment, while the boat turned lazily in the eddy. It now was headed up stream again, when she said:

“Is that dog good for anything?”

“Tom Jonah?” cried Tess and Dot together. “Why, he’s the best dog that ever was,” Dot added.

“Does he know anything?” insisted the strange girl.

“Uncle Rufus says he’s just as knowin’ as any human,” Tess said, impressively.

“Does he mind?” pursued the girl on the shore.

“Oh, yes,” said Tess. “He’ll sit up and beg – and shakes hands – and lies down and rolls over – and – ”

“Say! those tricks won’t help you any,” cried the other. “Can you make him swim ashore here?”

“Why – ee – I don’t know,” stammered Tess.

“We wouldn’t want to let you have Tom Jonah,” Dorothy hastened to explain.

“Goodness knows, I don’t want him,” said the big girl, still tartly. “But if he can swim ashore with the end of that rope you have coiled there in the bow of your boat, tied to his collar, he may be of some use.”

“Oh, yes!” cried Tess, scrambling toward the bow at once.

“See that the other end is fast to your boat,” commanded the girl on the island.

It was. Tess quickly knotted the free end of the long painter to Tom Jonah’s collar.

“Now send him ashore, child!” cried the big girl.

Tom Jonah was looking up at Tess with his wonderfully intelligent eyes. He seemed to understand just what was expected of him when the rope was tied to his collar.

“Go on, Tom Jonah! Overboard!” cried Tess, firmly.

“He – he’ll get all wet, Tess,” objected Dot, plaintively.

“That won’t hurt him, Dot,” explained her sister. “You know he loves the water.”

“Come on, here!” cried the girl on the island, snapping her fingers. “Push him overboard.”

But Tom Jonah did not need such urging. With his forepaws on the gunwale of the boat he barked several times. The boat tipped a little and Dot screamed, clutching the Alice-doll tighter to her bosom.

“Go on, Tom Jonah!” shouted Tess. “You’re rocking the boat!”

The big dog leaped over the gunwale into the river, leaving the light craft tossing in a most exciting fashion. Some water even slopped over the side.

“Come on, sir! come on!” shouted the girl ashore.

Tom Jonah swam directly for the beach where she stood. The line uncoiled freely behind him, slipping into the water. It was long enough to reach the shore where the big girl stood; but none too long.

The sag of the rope in the water began to trouble Tom Jonah, strong as he was. Quickly the girl drew off her shoes and stockings and waded in to meet the laboring dog.

“Come on, sir! now we’ll get them!” she urged, laying hold of the line.

The dog scrambled ashore, barking loudly. The line was taut and the boat had swung around, tugging on the other end like a thing of life.

“Now we have them!” cried the girl.

She pulled hard on the rope. Tom Jonah, seeing what she was doing, caught the rope in his strong jaws, and set back to pull, too. Tess and Dot screamed with delight.

As the big girl slowly drew in the rope the dog backed up the beach, and so the cedar boat, with its two remaining passengers, came to land.

“Oh, dear me! Oh, dear me!” gasped Dot, standing in the bow of the boat. “I’m so glad to get ashore. And so’s my Alice-doll,” she added, seriously.

Tess helped her sister to jump down upon the sand and then followed, herself. Tom Jonah dropped the rope and bounded about them, barking his satisfaction. But the strange girl was looking up and down the river, and over at the opposite shore, with a mind plainly disturbed.

“Come on, now!” she said, sharply. “Unfasten the rope from that dog’s collar. We’ll keep that. It may come in handy.”

“Don’t you want it to pull the boat up on the beach?” asked Tess, as she obeyed the command.

The strange girl was already unfastening the rope from the ring in the bow of the boat. She threw the line ashore and then pushed the boat off with such vigor that she ran knee deep into the river again.

“Oh! oh!” squealed Dot. “You’ll lose our boat.”

“I want to lose it,” declared the girl, coming back very red in the face from her exertions. “I got you kids ashore, ’cause you might have been tipped over, or hurt in some way. I’m not going to be bothered by that boat.”

“But that’s Ruthie’s boat,” exclaimed Tess.

“I can’t help it! You young ones go into the bushes there and sit down. Keep quiet, too. Take the dog with you and keep him quiet. Don’t let him run about, or bark. If he does I’ll tie him to a tree and muzzle him.”

“Why – why, I don’t think that’s very nice of you,” said Tess, who was too polite, and had too deep a sense of gratitude, to say just what she really thought of this conduct on the part of the strange girl. “We might have saved the boat for Ruth.”

“And it would give me dead away,” declared the big girl, angrily. “You children be satisfied that I took you ashore. Now keep still!”

“I – I don’t believe I like her very much, Tess,” Dot whispered again.

The older Corner House girl was not only puzzled by the strange girl’s actions and words, but she was somewhat frightened. She and Dot sat down among the bushes, where they were completely hidden from the river and the opposite shore, and called Tom Jonah to them.

He lay at their feet. He had shaken himself comparatively dry, and now he put his head on his paws and went to sleep.

“Well,” sighed Tess, caressing the dog’s head. “I’m glad we have him with us.”