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 ship, "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 ship. 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 shipwrecked 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.
"The very _idea_, auntie!" exclaimed Eunice. "As if we ever got into mischief! n.o.body looks after us especially, at Kayuna."
"And, consequently," said auntie, with a sly smile, "you go to the cider-mill when you are put in charge of the children, and get run away with by the oxen."
Eunice got very red.
"Well, that was a great while ago, auntie, when we were quite young,"
she said, with as much dignity as if the occurrence auntie referred to was half a dozen years ago, instead of one. "Anyway," changing the subject, "we"ll look after everything now, and you can stay till the last train, if you want to."
"No, dear, thank you. We"ll come on the 5.10, I think, at any rate.
Perhaps earlier, if we accomplish all our business. There! I didn"t put on my watch. Edna, will you run up-stairs and get it, from my bureau or table? I think I laid it on the table. No, wait. Have you yours, mother?
Never mind, then, Edna. But will you please put it back in my drawer, when you go up-stairs, dear? Don"t forget. Well, good-by. Be good children," and with a kiss all round, auntie and grandma got into the carriage.
"Good-by. Be sure and bring me some chocolate caramels," called Edna.
Auntie smiled, nodded, and waved her hand, and then Luke turned the corner, and they rolled away.
"The boys said that the tide would be right for bathing, about eleven,"
Cricket said, after they had watched them out of sight. "Come on, it"s most time," and off they trooped for their plunge. The children were already over at the Cove, with Eliza, running about in their little blue bathing-suits, though they generally went in only ankle deep. Edna could swim well, and Cricket had made good progress in the last week. Eunice took to the water as naturally as a duck, and, strange to say, had learned to swim well, before Cricket did.
After their bath they came back to the house, where Eunice and Cricket settled themselves on the piazza, to write letters to the travellers.
Cricket kept a journal letter and scribbled industriously every day.
Both Eunice and Cricket had sometimes very homesick moments, when papa and mamma seemed very far away, and Cricket, in particular, occasionally conjured up very gloomy possibilities of her pining away, and dying of homesickness, before they returned, so that when they should come home, they would find only her grave, covered with flowers. She even went so far, in one desperate moment, as to compose a fitting epitaph for her tombstone, which was to be of white marble, of course, with an angel on top.
This was the epitaph.
"Oh, stranger, pause! Beneath this mossy stone Lies a poor child, who died, forsaken and alone.
Her mother far in distant lands did roam, Leaving her daughter, Jean, to die at home.
She pined away in sad and lonely grief, Not any pleasures brought to her relief, And when at last her family returned, With sorrow great, about her death they learned.
So, pause, oh, stranger! drop a single tear, Pity the grief of her who liest here."
This effusion was the greatest consolation to Cricket. She never showed it to anybody, not even to Eunice, but she often took it out, and read it with much satisfaction, and was almost inclined to begin pining away directly.
But on the whole they were very contented, and it was much easier for them than if they had been left at Kayuna.
Dinner-time--dinner was a one o"clock feast, in the summer--came when they had finished their letters, and had them ready for the mail.
"We"ll have the European letters to-night," said Eunice, joyfully, as they sat down to the table. "Does it seem as if we"d been here two weeks? Mamma won"t seem so far away, when we get the first letters."
"There was the cablegram," said Edna.
"That doesn"t count," said Eunice. "It wasn"t mamma"s own dear handwriting."
"Papa writed it," chirped in Helen.