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Page 9
"We ought never to have come here," whispered Lillian, clutching
Madge's arm.
"Nonsense," returned Madge bravely, "we have as much right here as any
of these men."
"But I'd rather not stay," persisted Lillian.
"Didn't you say you were hungry?" asked Madge pointedly.
"Ye-es," hesitated Lillian, "but I just can't stay here."
"Nor I," chimed in Eleanor.
Madge looked appealingly at Phyllis, who shook her brown head
deprecatingly. "I don't believe we ought to stay here, Madge."
"You, too, Phil!" exclaimed Madge impatiently. "All right, Misses
'Fraid Cats,' we'll go. Here comes our luncheon, too."
The girls glanced quickly at the rosy-faced lad who came up at that
moment with their order on a tray.
"I'm so hungry," sighed Phil. "Perhaps we'd better----"
"So glad you've changed your mind," commented Madge rather satirically.
"But what about you, Lillian and Eleanor?"
"Let's stay this once, but next time we'll be more careful where we
lunch," smiled Eleanor.
"I take back all I said about 'Fraid Cats,'" laughed Madge. "We'll
hurry through our luncheon and leave here the moment we finish. After
all, as long as we are to become seasoned mariners we shall have to
learn to accustom ourselves to the vicissitudes of a sailor's life."
"But we can't be 'seasoned mariners' until we find our houseboat,"
reminded Lillian. "It doesn't look as though we'd find it to-day,
either."
"We must," was Madge's emphatic response. "Here we have been worrying
like mad about this restaurant not being a proper place in which to eat
our luncheon, while the really important question of where we are to
find our boat hasn't troubled us. We must go out of here saying, 'We
shall find it, we shall find it,' and then I believe we can't help but
run across it." Madge's blue eyes were alight with purpose and
enthusiasm.
"Good for you, Madge," laughed Phil. "Come on, girls. Let us finish
our tea and renew our search."
It was half-past three in the afternoon when they left the little
restaurant. The four girls were to spend the night in Baltimore with a
friend of Miss Tolliver's, who kept a boarding-place. As they were in
the habit of staying with Miss Rice when they came into Baltimore to do
their shopping, Miss Tolliver had, for once, after many instructions,
permitted the girls to go into town without a chaperon.
"Miss Rice said we did not have to be at her house until half-past five
o'clock," Phil volunteered, "so what shall we do?"
"There is a little park down there near the water," Lillian pointed
ahead. "Suppose we sit down there for a few minutes until we decide
where to go next?"
It was a balmy, sunshiny May day. While the girls rested on the park
benches they could see, far off, a line of ships sailing up the bay and
also the larger freight steamers. They were near one of the quiet
canals that formed an inlet from the great Chesapeake Bay. Lining the
banks of the canal were numbers of coal barges and canal boats.
On the deck of a canal boat a girl came out with a bundle of clothes in
her arms. She was singing in a high, sweet voice as she hung them on a
line strung across the deck of the boat.
The girls watched her silently as she flitted back and forth, and she
sang on, unconscious of her audience. She was singing a boat song
which the men chant as they row home at the close of day. The pathos
in the woman's voice was so exquisite, its notes so true, that Madge's
blue eyes filled with tears. None of the four friends stirred until
the song was over, and the girl in her faded calico dress and bare feet
had disappeared into the cabin of the boat.
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