Part 11 (1/2)

Cricket, evidently bewildered, sat up, and looked around her, then grasped the situation. Quickly she pulled down her tent, and restored her skirt to its original use. She unlashed her oars, and adjusted them in the oar-locks.

”Push--off--as--soon--as--you--can!” called Edna.

”Rock--the--boat--to--loosen--it.”

Cricket obeyed instructions. She kept up a steady swaying movement, dipping her oars lightly in the deepening water. At last, like Longfellow's s.h.i.+p, ”she starts! she moves!”

”Hurrah!” shouted Cricket, waving her oar, and then applying it vigorously. ”I'm off!”

One more determined shove and she _was_ off, and her boat floated in the hollow between herself and the island. It was but a moment's work then to pull in sh.o.r.e. If the two sisters had been parted for a year, they could not have greeted each other more rapturously. They rushed into each other's arms, kissing and hugging each other, while Edna declared she would eat up all the luncheon if they didn't stop.

”If I'm not starved!” cried Cricket, eagerly falling to as soon as the luncheon was opened. ”I almost thought I'd eat my shoes out in the boat.

It was awfully good of you not to eat anything till I got here.”

”There's enough to last us till we get home, anyway,” said Edna, munching away at the sandwiches with much satisfaction. ”Now tell us, Cricket, what became of you?”

”Nothing became of me. I thought I'd row over home for a drink, and old Billy and the children were down on the beach, and I took them out for a little row, and I played they were castaways from the burning s.h.i.+p. Then I took them in, and sat down to rest, and then I thought it was time to come back for you. I never thought about the tide, and there seemed to be plenty of water around, and suddenly I found the water had all turned into mud.”

”Cricket, your stockings are all coming down,” interrupted Eunice.

”Yes, I know,” said Cricket, coolly, stopping long enough to produce her side-elastics from her pocket. ”I took off my stocking-coddies to tie the oars up with, to make my tent. Why, I had lots of fun, girls. I couldn't think of any s.h.i.+pwrecked hero who was ever stuck in the mud, so I played the mud was a desert, and that I was Marco What's-his-name in his shrouded tent, and--”

”It was the Turk, who was at midnight in his shrouded tent,” interrupted Eunice, again.

”Was it? Well, I played it, anyway. Then I put my head down on my arm to look like him, and I must have gone to sleep, for the sun was pretty hot, even under my tent, and it made me dreadfully sleepy. Then I heard you call me, and there was the water all around me. Can't we start, now, Edna?”

”We can't get over that last bar nearest the sh.o.r.e, yet awhile,”

answered Edna, ”but we can start as soon as there is the least bit of water over it, for by the time we get there the water will be deep enough to float us.”

”I don't care how long we stay, now,” said Eunice, contentedly, ”since Cricket is here, and not out there all alone. I'll row in, Cricket.”

”See, there are the boys running along the sh.o.r.e, and beckoning.

Probably they mean it is safe to start now. Let's get ready. My goody, doesn't it seem as if we had been here a week?”

”Don't let's come again till it's high tide in the middle of the day,”

said Eunice. ”Here, now we have the things all in.”

”Isn't this boat a spectacle?” said Eunice, surveying its mud-splashed sides. ”Won't the boys give you a blessing, Miss Scricket!”

”A blessing is a good thing to have,” answered Cricket, quite undisturbed, as she yielded the oars to Eunice, and sat in the stern with Edna.

CHAPTER VIII.

A NEW PLASTER.

”It seems to me, my dear,” said grandma, standing on the piazza, and drawing on her gloves, ”that it is a _very_ great risk to run to go and leave those children to themselves for six whole hours. If you _could_ manage without me, I think I'll stay at home, even now,” and grandma looked somewhat irresolutely at the carriage, which was waiting at the gate to take them to the station.

”I am afraid you must come, mother, on account of those business matters,” Mrs. Somers answered. ”But the children will be all right, I know. Eliza will look out for the small fry, and the elders must look out for themselves,” she added, looking down at the three, Eunice, Edna, and Cricket, with a smile. ”Don't get into any mischief, will you?”

The girls looked insulted.