There was only a narrow ribbon of shore bordering this circular pond of water. The jungle grew almost to the edge of the water and the palms shaded it completely, for it was not many yards across.
As the sun’s rays were now hot, the look of this pool was delightful. Dot got down on her hands and knees to drink. But in a moment she sat back again, sputtering and crying out:
“Oh! Isn’t that nasty mean, Tess Kenway? It’s salt like all the rest of the water down here.”
“Why, there is no place where the sea runs in that I can see,” Tess declared. She tasted the water gingerly, then shook her head. “I guess you are right, Dot. I don’t understand it. But it is pretty in here, and cool.”
The two little girls remained at this pool all day. Fruit was plentiful, fringing the open water. They saw fish jump, or swimming in the clear depths. Far below, among the coral formations, the delicate seaweeds waved to and fro. There was a submarine opening or openings into the sea, but Tess and Dot scarcely understood the nature or origin of this salt water basin in the center of the little island.
Occasionally Dot sighed and made dismal complaint that she wished Ruthie and the others would come for them. But the fact remained that being cast away on one island was just about the same as being cast away on another.
They were so far from the careened motor-boat that the sisters decided to remain where they were over night. Occasionally during the afternoon the two made a pilgrimage to the shore where they could see the Isobel; but they saw nothing else, and certainly did not catch sight of the raft with Mr. Howbridge and Luke and Neale upon it.
The fast falling evening caught the little girls by the edge of the pool in the middle of the island.
“I don’t care,” said Tess, when Dot began to sniffle a bit. “I don’t care if we do have to stay here. Here the sand is warm and there are none of those big turtles to crawl out and maybe bite us.”
“Oh! I wish you wouldn’t,” gasped Dot. “I had forgotten about those old turkles.”
The two sisters fell asleep as calmly as though they were in their own beds at the old Corner House. This was by no means the first night they had been lost and had slept in the open air. And nothing had ever really harmed them; though it is true that they were frightened at times.
This occasion was no exception. They could not have been sleeping two hours when first Tess and then Dot was aroused. It was not the splashing of the silvery water in the pool that aroused them, but some sound—a groan or sigh that actually seemed to have been uttered right in their ears!
Up sat the two little girls, wide awake and with wide-open eyes. They faced the pool. Out of this, rising slowly and ghostily, was a glistening gray body like a drowned giant that might have suddenly come up to breathe.
And the sigh he uttered! It made the flesh of Tess and Dot Kenway quiver to hear that sound and the blood seemed to freeze in their veins.
“O-o-o-o-o-o!” moaned the mysterious ghost, while the water poured in a gentle shower from his shoulders.
The two older Corner House girls, like the two younger, were fear-ridden during at least a part of that second night of their separation. But perhaps Tess and Dot had much less to be really afraid of than Ruth and Agnes.
The latter spent the remainder of the hours of darkness after the strangers landed on Palm Island at the foot of the great tree that topped the hill above the camp that had been established for the girls before the boys had taken to the raft with Mr. Howbridge.
Crouched at the foot of the giant palm Ruth and Agnes clung to each other, sleeping but fitfully, until dawn. Aroused in the faint gray light, the sisters crept down to the shelter of the jungle again. They lay there, listening for sounds from the camp which they believed the Spanish-speaking crew of the mysterious craft had made at the spring.
The men were not early astir. When the sun was well up Ruth insisted upon going up the hill again and out into the open so that they could see over a low place in the jungle to the cove where the mysterious boat was anchored.
It was there in the mist. Agnes clung to her sister’s arm and stared at it too. A somewhat slovenly looking craft, wide of beam, unpainted, with stubbed masts, old rigging, and a dirty smother of canvas that had not been even reefed when it was allowed to drop upon the deck.
If the appearance of the craft was a criterion of the character of her crew, the girls hoped not to see the latter at all!
“I am afraid to talk with them. I wish Mr. Howbridge and the boys were here,” said Ruth.
“Wouldn’t we better ask these men to go in search of Guardy and Luke and Neale?”
“Should we? I wonder,” sighed Ruth. “Perhaps they know something about the children.”
“Then we must ask them!” cried Agnes.
“Wait. They are up now. I hear them.”
In fact, within a very few moments the girls heard the strangers down upon the beach. The fog had lain upon the shore and sea in a low curtain for some minutes after the sun came up. Now by the shouting they heard, Ruth and Agnes knew that the crew ashore was chasing and capturing the turtles.
“I guess these men are just turtle catchers,” Ruth said reflectively. “They go from island to island capturing the turtles. It is not likely that a gentleman like Señor Benno would have engaged such men to search for us. I am afraid of them, Agnes.”
“So am I, dear. Unless we tell them that we have friends and a motor-boat near——”
“But they will want to know why the motor-boat does not come after us. No. We must remain hidden.”
They dared not go back to their camp under the rock. The turtle catchers would of course find that retreat. But as long as they did not know that the campers were girls who were still on the island, Ruth hoped the fellows would make no search for them.
After a while Agnes tired of staying hidden in the jungle. Besides, the insects became very troublesome as the day grew warmer.
“And how do we know but Mr. Howbridge and the boys are trying to signal to us? At least, they may have found the children and be in sight again.”
“I really hope you will keep quiet, Agnes,” said the older girl. “I do not want to attract these men. They do look awfully rough.”
“I know!” sighed Agnes. “Do you suppose the turtle catchers will remain long?”
“I don’t know just how they follow their—their profession,” hesitated Ruth.
“Profession!” giggled Agnes.
“But they will probably remain here until they have made a complete haul of the turtles that come to this shore. I do not think any great numbers were here last night. Neale said something about the numbers fluctuating very much, did he not?”
“That boy reads and absorbs so much,” declared Agnes. “To think of his knowing about sea-turtles at all!”
“If we ever come into this locality again,” said Ruth, “I shall want to be informed upon a lot of topics that I never considered of moment.”
“You’d think Neale O’Neil had expected to be cast away on a desert island,” declared the younger sister. “He makes a play of it.”
“He takes it too lightly, I fear,” sighed Ruth. “But let us hope he will not take the search for Tess and Dot too lightly. The poor dears! What might not have happened to them in these two days?”
“Well,” rejoined Agnes, “we know what happened to them for part of the time. They were safe enough when they drifted out of our sight night before last.”
“Safe enough!” repeated Ruth.
“At least, they had not been drowned,” her sister said convincingly. “And I do believe, dear—somehow I feel it!—that nothing actually bad has happened to them. Guardy and the boys will find them safe and sound.”
“I can only hope so. And I hope they find the boat safe and sound as well. If they can finish repairing it——Oh, dear me! Why was I foolish enough the other day to insist upon their stopping in the repair work and finding water first?”
“Well!” exclaimed Agnes.
“I blame myself,” declared the older girl. “If I had been content the engine would have been working and the children could not have drifted away on the Isobel. Dear me! I am always doing something for which I condemn myself afterward.”
“I know you condemn yourself, Ruthie, all right,” returned Agnes. “But I do not think you are always just. See how you blamed yourself for our going to Carrie Poole’s dance and getting cold. One would never think we ever had a cold now! You are as brown as a berry and I am positively getting fat.”
“I am not so sure that I am to be the less condemned for our having foolishly taken chances with our health back home. If it hadn’t been for that we should not be in this situation, that is sure.”
“Goodness! You are unreasonable, I think,” murmured Agnes, and said no more at the time.
She insisted, however, upon stealing up the hill to the foot of the palm tree and gazing off across the sea to the east in the hope of seeing some sign of their friends. Ruth could not restrain Agnes from doing this every couple of hours.
The binoculars had been left with them, and Agnes scanned sharply every observable foot of the nearest island. The spot where the Isobel lay was around on the far side, however; and what had become of the raft was as great a mystery to the girls.
About noon she came hurriedly back to Ruth, however, and told her that the thing that had been fluttering so long from the top of the palm tree on that other island was gone.
“Blown away?” remarked Ruth thoughtfully.
“I don’t think so. The wind is not blowing very hard. I wish I had sat right up there and kept the glasses on that tree. I might have seen something.”
“Do you suppose it was removed by Guardy or the boys?”
“Why not? If it was put up by Tess and Dot——”
“In that tall tree! Impossible.”
“Well, then, are there two parties of castaways?” demanded Agnes, rather crossly. “Everything I suggest you pick flaws in, Ruthie.”
But Ruth hugged her, and the younger sister returned her caress with real affection. Their trouble was too deep for them really to wrangle. The anxiety each felt drew them closer together.
If of late Agnes had felt herself shut away from Ruth’s closer confidence because of the older girl’s interest in Luke Shepard, this experience on the tropical island was renewing the sisters’ old-time contact and appreciation of each other. It was true Agnes was hoydenish at times, and loved to play with Neale O’Neil and the other boys; but she was growing older every day, too, and many of the secrets and interests of girlhood she could share only with Ruth.
“Cheer up!” she now exclaimed, wiping the tears from her sister’s eyes with the cleanest corner of her only handkerchief. “Surely we need not go through much more worriment. This situation is past being made any worse, that is sure.”
“I wish it may be so,” murmured Ruth.
“Of course it is. Things will take a turn. We’ll soon see the Isobel scooting around the end of that island and heading this way.”
But this much desired sight did not gladden their eyes. Even Ruth climbed to the palm tree to watch. And it was because the two girls remained up there that the final incident of their adventure on the island came to fruition. They were seen from the deck of the frowsy schooner!
They were startled by a raucous shout from the sea. Turning her glasses in that direction, Ruth beheld a ragamuffin sailor half way up the foremast of the turtle catcher waving his cap at them.
“Oh, Agnes, they have seen us!” gasped Ruth.
“Let’s—let’s run and hide!” murmured the younger girl.
“I don’t know that that will do much good.”
“I know it will,” cried Agnes. “That is, if we hide so well that they cannot find us.”
“Perhaps it would be better to face them and make them think that we have men friends near at hand.”
“No chance,” urged Agnes. “We can’t fool them. They will know that we have been hiding from them. If there were men in our party they would have already shown up. No, Ruth, we can’t fool ’em that way.”
“Perhaps you are right,” sighed the older sister. “But where shall we hide?”
“Let’s go back to the other point—where the Isobel was moored. When the boys return they will come there first, of course.”
Agnes spoke much more confidently than she felt. Like her sister she had a strong dislike to meeting these turtle catchers. She had seen that class of natives on the water front at St. Sergius, and their appearance had rather intimidated even Agnes, who usually felt no fear of any of her fellow men.
The startled and sleepy children beside the pool on the smaller island clung together in speechless terror for the few minutes following their being aroused by the marine “ghost” that had risen through the waters. Its glistening, high-shouldered body was a most mysterious sight, that was true.
The starlight was so vivid, however, that soon Tess and Dot were able to distinguish the outlines of the beast more clearly. No denial could be made of its voice, for it puffed out a most astonishing sigh. Nothing like this beast had either girl ever imagined.
“O-oo!” murmured Dot. “Look at the whale!”
She came not far from the proper designation. It was a grampus. But a grampus is a cetacean, and that is the family to which whales belong. The grampus stood on its tail in the water, with the greater upper part of its body exposed, and sighed again as though its heart were broken.
Then it flung itself flat upon the water with a splash that must have echoed to the far end of the island. At least, Dot Kenway’s shriek of fear echoed that far.
“Stop yelling. It’s gone,” said Tess.
“But he spattered me all over,” sobbed the smaller girl. “Oh! I don’t like this place, Tess. The whales come in and wake you up and—and——”
“Hush!” commanded Tess, hearing something new. “Listen.”
“Won’t hush,” sobbed Dot. “Is it another whale?”
“It’s—it’s——Oh, Dot Kenway!” shrieked Tess suddenly, and darted up from the sand, “it’s Neale O’Neil!”
This was a sufficiently impressive declaration to stop Dot’s sobs and complaints. She staggered hastily to her feet, clinging to her sister, and joined her voice to the latter’s in shrieking: “Help!”
Just what they wanted help for now that the grampus was gone, was a question quite beside the situation. The little girls continued to scream. Neale’s voice answered them. They heard other voices.
“I guess we are rescued, Tess,” gulped Dot. “They have found out where we are. No use yelling any more.”
“I’m going to shout till I see them,” said the practical Tess, who did not propose giving their friends any chance to get away from them.
Neale came crashing through the brush after a time. Luke and Mr. Howbridge were right behind him, and Luke carried a flashlight. The ray of this flashed into the girls’ faces just as another splash and groan was heard from the pool.
“For goodness’ sake! What’s that?” demanded the lawyer, panting in the rear of the trio.
“No wonder the kids yelled!” exclaimed Neale.
“What is it?” cried Luke.
They were startled to see the glistening, ghostly object rise from the depths. But they loudly greeted Tess and Dot. The latter explained:
“Oh, it’s a whale come up to breathe. He scared us dreadful!”
Luke named the creature correctly the next moment. “And they are not often seen, I understand. They’re enough to frighten a high school at night, let alone a couple of little kiddies.”
He grabbed Tess and Dot, one in the crook of each arm, and kissed them soundly as he raised them to his shoulders. Mr. Howbridge exclaimed over the lost children, too, and afterward Dot told Tess that she had no idea their guardian “could cry.”
There was reason for Mr. Howbridge shedding a few tears over the recovery of the smallest Kenways. The stranding of the Isobel on this island in safety had been a miracle indeed. A hundred untoward things might have happened to the children.
A little after nightfall the boys and Mr. Howbridge had worked their raft into the shallow cove where the motor-boat lay and had landed. Looking for Tess and Dot in the dark of the tropical night was almost a hopeless task.
By chance Neale had heard Dot’s shriek when she had been frightened by the marine monster in the pool. Charging across the island, he had led the way to the small sisters.
That night, about the fire on the shore, was a cheerful one indeed for the boys and the lawyer while the little girls slept soundly. Their discovery and recovery of Tess and Dot by the trio of searchers had been easier than they had hoped in their most sanguine moments.
“And Ruth will certainly be a happy girl again,” Luke often repeated.
“Hope we can get back to them soon,” Neale rejoined.
“Wish we could signal to them that the children are found,” ruminated Luke.
The nearest they could do in the matter of signaling was to take down Tess’ plaid skirt from the top of the palm tree the next morning. This Neale did after a while, and he praised Tess for thinking of putting up the skirt in the first place.
“If I finally decide to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, Tessie,” Neale said soberly, “I’ll take you along as a partner.”
“No, you won’t,” said Tess promptly. “For I won’t go, Neale O’Neil. I don’t ever expect to be cast away again, so there!”
Early in the afternoon the trio got the motor-boat into the water again and anchored it off shore. The mechanism was already adjusted. It had to be tried out, changed a little, and finally set to running. There was sufficient gasoline to carry them a long way if the machinery ran perfectly.
Had Ruth and Agnes not been so frightened by the fact that their presence on Palm Island had been discovered by the turtle fishers, they would surely have spied the Isobel when she first came into view from behind the smaller island where Tess and Dot had been marooned.
The older girls hid in the jungle down by the rocky point and waited through the evening in much alarm. They heard and even saw some of the rough men passing and repassing the place of their concealment. They dared not go to sleep, and feared that they would have to remain awake, and in hiding, until another day.
But while the minutes crept by so slowly, Agnes, quick-eared as well as sharp of eye, began to hear a sound that at first puzzled then excited her. She seized Ruth more tightly in her arms.
“Oh, Ruthie! Listen! What is it?”
“Sh! They will hear you,” murmured her sister.
“I—I want them to, I guess,” choked Agnes. “Hear that? It’s the chugging of a motor-boat, Ruth!”
“Oh, never!” exclaimed the older girl, but getting up to her knees.
“It is the Isobel. Surely it is. They are coming! Neale! Neale!”
Wildly excited at last, the younger girl leaped to her feet and bounded out of concealment. As she landed in the sand and struck out for the rocky point, Ruth heard a shout behind them and the heavy tread of men running down the beach.
“Agnes! Agnes! They will catch us!” she shrieked, and ran madly after her sister.
Agnes thought of nothing, however, but the fact, as she believed, that their friends were near at hand. She climbed upon the highest boulder in the neighborhood and shrieked a welcome.
“Neale! Guardy! Luke! Here we are!” cried the wild girl. “Are the children safe? Tessie! Dot! Tell Agnes if you are all right!”
Her wild cry was echoed from the sea. She could even observe the Isobel approaching. And the voices of the children and those of the boys and Mr. Howbridge were soon distinguishable.
Had the turtle fishers intended the two girls any harm, these cries from the water and the approach of the motor-boat must have warned the natives. Ruth and Agnes stood on the rock, and the fishermen approached to within a few yards of them.
They chattered much in Spanish, and then one spoke in English:
“Eet ees that the señoritas haf friend—amigo—in the boat—no?”
“Tell them that we’ve got friends coming, yes!” exclaimed Agnes.
Ruth could remember just about enough Spanish to make herself understood. She told the fishermen their friends had been away in the motor-boat but were now arriving.
“Ah! If the señors should weesh help of any kind, we are of the willingness to do—si, señorita!” exclaimed the man, and led his comrades away along the beach just as the Isobel, by the light of the stars, shoved her nose into the little inlet.
The boys leaped ashore the moment the motor-boat was near enough to the rocky landing. Such a noisy time as it was for a minute, with Tess and Dot shrieking greetings and the boys hurrahing! Suddenly Agnes was heard to say sharply:
“I like your impudence, Neale O’Neil! Who said you could do that, I’d like to know?”
“Don’t lay it up against me,” drawled her boy chum. “Really couldn’t help it. I merely followed Luke’s example.”
“Come, come!” exclaimed Mr. Howbridge. “No quarreling there—especially on such a joyful occasion. Who were those men I saw?”
Agnes ran to meet him as he moored the boat and explained about the turtle fishers and told how frightened she and Ruth had been.
“Well, well! Perhaps they are harmless. But what do you say, boys? The engine is working like a charm, and the night is lovely. Had we better not head for St. Sergius before something worse happens to us?”
“Oh!” cried Ruth, clasping her hands, “that sounds sweet.”
“Guess we all have got enough of Palm Island,” said Luke.
The bigger girls had by this time got aboard the motor-boat to greet Tess and Dot. The four sisters cuddled down in the cockpit and chattered like four magpies. There was so much to tell!
The Isobel was therefore backed around and headed out of the little harbor once more. There was nothing much on the island that they would need. And, in any case, Mr. Howbridge considered it quite as well to get away without coming into contact with the turtle catchers.
Everything that had happened to the little girls had to be told over and over again, right down to the excitement of the grampus—which Dot insisted upon calling a grandpa.
“But he wasn’t anything like Margaret and Holly Pease’s grandpa—for he’s real nice,” added the littlest Corner House girl with her usual loose association of ideas. “He’s got the nicest white hair and a gold-headed cane——”
“Not the grampus, Dot,” groaned Tess, in despair.
“No; of course not that grandpa. Margaret and Holly Pease’s. You’ve seen his gold-headed cane yourself, Tess Kenway. I wish you wouldn’t always interrupt me. Now—now,” and she yawned, “I forget—forget what I was going to say.”
She proceeded almost instantly to go fast asleep with her head in Ruth’s lap.
The evening following, the Isobel poked her nose into the passage past the fort and ran into the harbor of St. Sergius. It was true that her appearance was not noted by the whole city and the welcome of the lost ones acclaimed by naval broadsides and the city factory whistles. Nevertheless, the cause of their absence had been suspected and the boat of the harbor police ran alongside the Isobel before she reached her usual mooring-buoy.
It seemed that Señor Benno had been to the other side of the island and had returned only that day and made inquiries about his friend, Mr. Howbridge, and his boat. Some inquiries had been addressed to the authorities by people at the hotel, too, and the authorities were very glad indeed to learn of the safe return of the Americanos.
“They needn’t fret,” sighed Agnes. “They are not half as glad to have us back as we are to get back. What say, Ruthie?”
Ruth hugged Tess and Dot and nodded. It had been a very difficult experience for Ruth Kenway. Secretly she was determined that the smaller children should never be out of her sight again as long as they remained at St. Sergius.
Agnes and Neale were welcomed with much hilarity by the young people of their clique at the St. Sergius Arms, and when they had heard of all the wonderful experiences through which the absentees had passed the two were more popular than ever.
Nalbro Hastings was really quite overpowering in her attentions to Agnes, and the latter was not a little proud that the wealthy Back Bay girl should think so much of her. Agnes had begun to realize, however, that Miss Hastings was really worth while and that she was simple in tastes and kindly of intention.
“I guess I like her because she’s her,” Agnes confessed to Neale. “You said she was a good scout, and she is. But it must just be wonderful after all to be so rich.”
“Wealth won’t keep you from getting your teeth knocked out if you fall from a horse,” chuckled Neale O’Neil. “Sure, she’s a good sport. But she’s nowhere near as pretty as you are, Aggie.”
Tess and Dot might have been inclined to brag a little about their adventures on “Plam” Island, as Dot insisted upon calling it. But they found waiting for them a letter from Sammy Pinkney, and that youthful scribe managed to invest his personal achievements with such a glamor of adventure that even the romance of being cast away on an uninhabited island paled into insignificance.
“Dere Tess and Dot:
“If mom wil let me alon and not mak me tak and lok into the spelin bok evry minit or so Ile try to tel you what has ben goin on here at Milton sins you went down to thos wes innies.
“Yore Belgn hare that you wen off and lef is alright. And Bily Bumps is alright. And Uncle Ruf is alright. And Tom Jonah is alright. And Linda is alright. And Scalawag is alright. And Missus Mack is alright. And Con Murpy’s pig eat his way out of the pen and got in the Willow Wyte sewer and the street depatmen had to come and get him out and Con was mad. So evrybody is well.
“We got a dandy slid on Power Street and Shot Pendlton went through the barb wire fens but I diden and droped off and he was cut up sumpn ferce and got a black eye fightin a feller that said his father stole. But it was another feller done it and Shot’s father went back to work for Kolbeck and Roods.”
Right at this point the Kenway sisters and their boy friends, as well as Mr. Howbridge, became very much excited. It was the first intimation they had had of the result of the inquiry into the Pendleton’s troubles. Sammy Pinkney had nothing further to say about “Shot” Pendleton’s father and his affairs, although his letter to Tess and Dot was both exhaustive and exciting. The next day’s mail, however, brought a considerable communication from Mr. Howbridge’s clerk in whose charge the lawyer had left the Pendleton case.
Ruth in particular had taken so deep an interest in the family that the news of the solving of the mystery about the stolen silks was a matter that held her attention, if it did not that of her sisters.
“I am so delighted to know that the shadow is lifted from that poor man’s reputation,” she said to Mr. Howbridge. “And all the while the man who appeared to befriend him was the guilty one!”
“You possess intuition developed to the nth degree, Ruth,” said Mr. Howbridge, smiling. “I remember that you said that Israel Stumpf seemed to be two-faced. And he was. Scandal in the Kolbeck family, my clerk writes. Kolbeck would not save Stumpf even to please his wife. The young man is out on bail, but he certainly will be punished for stealing.”
“And have they taken Mr. Pendleton back?”
“So I am told here. At a little better salary and in a place of increased responsibility. Kolbeck is a decent man. He means to do what he sees is right, I fancy.”
When Tess and Dot understood more fully the final outcome of the trouble that had for so long disturbed the Pendleton children—Margy and Carrie as well as their brother—they both wanted to write home to the little Pendletons about it.
“We’re so glad that nice Mr. Pendleton isn’t going to be called a thief any more,” Tess remarked to Ruth, “that we want to let ’em know how we feel. Besides, I guess Mrs. Pendleton is happy now, too.”
“And he’s a very interesting man, I think,” added Dot. “I never knew another man who fell out of a tree. Did you, Tess?”
“No,” drawled Tess. “I guess I never did. And it is so nice that he is proved to be honest. How happy Margy and Carrie will be.”
So the little girls sat down that evening to write to the little Pendleton girls. This got Agnes and Neale started. They, too, had been warmly interested in the Pendleton case and in spite of the many and exciting things they had to think of at the St. Sergius Arms, the chums felt that they would like to express their congratulations to Mrs. Pendleton.
“Well, well!” said Mr. Howbridge, laughing, as he saw all the Corner House party preparing to bombard the Pendletons with written communications. “Suppose we get up a round robin of congratulation, all sign it, and send it to the Pendletons? And we will send them something with it that will be more material, if you all agree. What do you say to a case of fruit?”
“Oh!” gasped Dot, suddenly. “And an alligator. One of those baby ones. I guess Margy and Carrie would like one for a pet.”
But Ruth managed to steer the littlest girl off that topic. The alligator went home to Milton later as a present to Sammy Pinkney. It was a memento of the Corner House Girls’ stay at St. Sergius bound to fill young Sammy with delight and his mother with distaste. Still, as Neale pointed out, it was little worse when considered as a house-pet than the Belgian hare.
That single trip of exploration sufficed for all the Kenway party while they remained at St. Sergius. Professor Keeps had scarcely noticed Luke Shepard’s absence, although it had been for almost a week. He was a very absent-minded professor, indeed. But once the young man was at his work again, the botanist kept him busy.
Luke was interested in the work too. He gave himself over to the botanical excursions and the Corner House girls had to find their fun and excitement without his help.
Neale was able to assist Mr. Howbridge in certain business matters as well. He rode often to Señor Benno’s principal estate at the further end of the island, and this took him from Agnes more than that young person liked.
“There’s not much fun without Neale around,” she confessed to Ruth. “He aggravates me, and pokes fun at me, and all. But he leaves a sort of emptiness behind him when he’s gone.”
“Get better acquainted with the other girls,” advised Ruth sympathetically. “There are some nice ones here.”
To this statement Agnes Kenway agreed. One girl especially appealed to her. Nalbro Hastings proved upon further acquaintance to be just as sweet and companionable as she had seemed to be at first.
“And she is coming to see us,” Agnes told Ruth. “She has promised to come to Milton this spring. Just think! The old Corner House will have to put its best foot forward to entertain the Nalbro Hastings. I’m glad we’ve got a car. But don’t you think, Ruthie, we can afford a neat little maid with a cap and apron? Linda is so clumsy.”
“Neale would say you wanted to ‘put on dog,’” ventured Ruth, laughing.
“Now, dear! Consider! This girl is used to everything.”
“Then she must be used to flat-footed Finn servant girls,” declared Ruth gaily. “She must take us as we are.” And although she seconded her sister’s invitation very warmly to the Back Bay girl, Ruth made up her mind that she should not be foolishly catered to.
People came to the St. Sergius Arms to rest; but the Kenway party seemed to find little time for that. For the younger set there was something gay doing almost every day and evening. And when it came time for Mr. Howbridge to take his flock back to the north there was a gay masquerade dance engineered in honor particularly of Ruth and Agnes.
It was a very gay occasion, quite the gayest indeed that the sisters had ever entered into. Even the Poole dance early in the winter, where they had so unfortunately caught cold, had not delighted Agnes so much. And Ruth could not fail to be charmed, everything about the masquerade ball was so well done.
Luke would remain some weeks longer with Professor Keeps. But he was on hand for the ball.
Were Tess and Dot forgotten? They most certainly were not! Dot went as a fairy, gauzy wings and all, while Tess was Little Bo-Peep and carried a crook.
“Though you haven’t got any sheep, Tess,” observed Dot critically. “You haven’t even got one of those big turtles to drive! So I don’t see what good that big cane does you.”
“I’d look nice trying to drive Mr. Methuselah, wouldn’t I?” said her sister scornfully.
“I could ride on him,” giggled Dot. “That was funny. I guess Sammy Pinkney would say it was funny. I wish Sammy could see Cristuff Columbo and Julius Cæsar—though that’s the name of Bill Monnegan’s horse.”
“Now, Dot Kenway!” exclaimed Tess, “you are going to take home that alligator to Sammy. You can’t take all the reptiles in the world to him. You couldn’t put one of those turtles in our trunk.”
“Oh, well,” sighed Dot. “But I know Sammy won’t believe it if he doesn’t see those turkles. I say, Tess!”
“Well? What is it?” asked her unruffled sister.
“Do you know, I just believe that after we tell Sammy Pinkney about all we did and saw and about the turkles that the next time he runs away to be a pirate he’ll go to Plam Island. I just know he will,” and she repeated her statement with the utmost confidence.
THE END