"No, not exactly. It won"t be used for a long time, I expect, but it has an owner. An old gentleman in Bay City owns all the sh.o.r.e front along here for half a mile, and he has been holding on to it with the idea that it would get more valuable as time went on. Probably it will, too."
"Well, he lets people come here to camp, doesn"t he?"
"Oh, yes. He"s glad to have people here, I think, because he thinks that if they see how lovely it is, they will want to buy the land. I suppose perhaps these people on the yacht have permission from him to come here, just as we have. But I do wish they had waited until we had gone, or else that they had come and gone before we got here at all."
"Perhaps they will just stay for the night," said Margery. "I should think that a small boat like that would be very likely to put in overnight, and do its sailing in the daytime. Probably the people on board of her aren"t in a hurry, and like to take things easily."
"Well, we won"t find out anything about her to-night, I imagine," said Eleanor. "In the morning we"ll probably learn what their plans are, and then it will be time to make any changes that are necessary in our own arrangements."
"Do you mean you wouldn"t stay here if they did, Miss Eleanor?"
"I won"t say that, Margery. We don"t know who they are yet. They may be very nice people--there"s no way of telling to-night. But if they turn out to be undesirable, we can move quite easily, I think. There are plenty of other beaches nearby where we"ll be just as comfortable as we are here."
"Oh, but I don"t believe any of them are as beautiful as this one, Miss Eleanor."
"Neither do I, Margery. Still, we can"t always pick and choose the things we do, or always do what pleases us best."
On the yacht everything seemed to be quiet. When the anchor had gone down, the violin playing ceased, and, though the girls strained their ears to listen, there was no sound of conversation, such as might reasonably have been expected to come across the quiet water. Still there was nothing strange about that. It might well be that everyone on board was below, eating supper, and in that case voices would probably not come to them.
"I"d like to own that yacht," said Dolly, gazing at her enviously. "What a lot of fun you could have with her, Bessie! Think of all the places one could see. And you wouldn"t have to leave a place until you got ready. Steamers leave port just as railroad trains pull out of a station, and you may have to go away when you haven"t half finished seeing all the things you want to look at."
"Maybe they"ll send a boat ash.o.r.e soon," said Margery, hopefully. "I certainly would like to see the sort of people who are on board."
"So would I," said Eleanor, but with a different and a more anxious meaning in her tone.
"I wish that man with the violin would start playing again," said Dolly.
"I love to hear him, and it seems to me it"s especially beautiful when the sound comes to you over the water that way."
"Music always sounds best over the water," said Eleanor. "He does play well. I"ve been to concerts, and heard famous violin players who didn"t play a bit better--or as well, some of them."
And just at that moment the music came to them again, wailing, mournful, as if the strings of the violin were sobbing under the touch of the bow, held in the fingers of a real master. The music blended with the night, and the listening girls seemed to lose all desire to talk, so completely did they fall under the spell of the player.
But after a little while a harsh voice on the deck of the yacht interrupted the musician. They could not distinguish the words, but the speaker was evidently annoyed by the music, for it stopped, and then, for a few minutes, there was an argument in which the voices of two men rose shrilly.
"Well, I guess the concert is over," said Dolly, getting up. "Who wants a drink? I"m thirsty."
"So am I!" came in chorus from half a dozen of those who were sitting on the sands.
"Serve you right if you all had to go after your own water," said Dolly. "But I"m feeling nice to-night. I guess it"s the music. Come on, Bessie--feel like taking a little walk with me?"
"I don"t mind," said Bessie, rising, and stretching her arms luxuriously. "Where are you going?"
"Up the bluff first, to get a pail of water from that spring. After that--well, we"ll see."
"Just like Jack and Jill," said Bessie, as they trudged up the path, carrying a pail between them.
"I hope we won"t be like them and fall down," said Dolly. "I suppose I"d be Jack--and I don"t want to break my crown."
"It"s an easy path. I guess we"re safe enough," said Bessie. "It really hardly seems worth while to fix up that pipe-line Miss Eleanor spoke about."
"Oh, you"ll find it"s worth while, Bessie. The salt air makes everyone terribly thirsty, and after you"ve climbed this path a few times it won"t seem so easy to be running up and down all the time. There are so many other things to do here that it"s a pity to waste time doing the same thing over and over again when you don"t really need to."
"I suppose that"s so, too. It"s always foolish to do work that you don"t need to do--I mean that can be done in some easier way. If your time"s worth anything at all, you can find some better use for it."
"That"s what I say! It would be foolish and wasteful to set a hundred men to digging when one steam shovel will do the work better and quicker than they can. And it"s the same way with this water here. If we can put up a pipe in about an hour that will save two or three hours of chasing every day, whenever water is needed, it must be sensible to do it."
They got the water down without any mishap, however, and it was eagerly welcomed.
"It"s good water," said Margery. "But not as good as the water at Long Lake and in the mountains."
"That"s the best water in the world, Margery," said Eleanor. "This is cold, though, and it"s perfectly healthy. And, after all, that is as much as we can expect. Are you and Bessie going for a walk, Dolly?"
"We thought we would, if you don"t mind."
"I don"t mind, of course. But don"t go very far. Stay near enough so that you can hear if we call, or for us to hear you if you should happen to call to us."
Dolly looked startled.
"Why should we want to call you?" she asked.
"No reason that I can think of now, Dolly. But--well, I suppose I"m nervous. The way they tried to get hold of Bessie and Zara at Canton to-day makes me feel that we"ve got to be very careful. And there is no use taking unnecessary chances."
"All right," said Dolly, with a laugh. "But I guess we"re safe enough to-night, anyhow. They haven"t had time to find out yet how Bessie fooled them. My, but they"ll be mad when they do find out what happened!"
"They certainly will," laughed Margery. "I wouldn"t want to be in Jake Hoover"s shoes."
"I hope nothing will happen to him," said Eleanor, anxiously. "It would be a great pity for him to get into trouble now."
"I think he deserves to get into some sort of trouble," said Dolly, stoutly. "He"s made enough for other people."
"That"s true enough, Dolly. But it wouldn"t do us any good if he got into trouble now, you know."
"No, but it might do him some good--the brute! You haven"t seen him when he was cutting up, the way I have, Miss Eleanor."
"No, and I"m glad I didn"t. But you say it might do him some good.
That"s just what I think it would not do. He has just made up his mind to be better, and suppose he sees that, as a reward, he gets himself into trouble. What is he likely to do, do you think?"
"That"s so," said Margery. "You"re going off without thinking again, Dolly, as usual. He"d cut loose altogether, and think there wasn"t any sort of use in being decent."
"Well, I haven"t much faith in his having reformed," said Dolly. "It may be that he has, but it seems too good to be true to me. I bet you"ll find that he"ll be on their side, after all, and that he"ll just spend his time thinking up some excuse for having put them on the wrong track to-day."
"I think that"s likely to keep him pretty busy, Dolly," said Eleanor, dryly. "And that"s one reason I really am inclined to believe that he"ll change sides, and go to Charlie Jamieson, as Bessie advised him to do."
"Well, if he does, it won"t be because he"s sorry, but because he"s afraid," said Dolly. "If he can be of any use to us, why, I hope he"s all right. I don"t like him, and I never will like him, and there isn"t any use in pretending about it!"
Everyone laughed at that.
"You"re quite right, Dolly," said Margery. "When you dislike a person anyone who can see you or hear you knows about it. I"ll say that for you--you don"t pretend to be friends with people when you really hate them."