The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest Part 15

"Oh, please, please don't come!" she begged, and her eyes had the look of a frightened animal. "You don't know what it would mean to me. And I ask you not to. Won't you promise?"

The girls looked at the changed creature in undisguised astonishment.

"We don't want to bring trouble on you, Kitty, if that is what you mean," said Julia. "But we have promised ourselves a trip to that queer island. Of course, if it would hurt you for us to go----"

"Oh, it would, that's it. It would hurt me more than you could guess.

So tell me you won't come over!"

"All right, we'll see," said Cleo, and they hurried off to the bathing house to dress, as the time for visiting Captain Dave had been consumed in talking to Kitty.

"Well, what do you think of that?" almost gasped Cleo when they joined the other girls who had been impatiently waiting for the report from the life saving station.

"Whatever is wrong about Luna Land?" added Louise. "Now see where we are at."

"Can't we go?" pouted Grace.

"I don't see why not," put in Julia. "Surely, we couldn't make any trouble, just by going over there. I think that girl is--woozy."

"Well, I think she's pretty sharp," said Cleo, "and until we can find out from some one what is wrong over there, I'll vote to defer the trip.

Suppose we really should bring trouble on that poor cropped head!"

"That's so," agreed Grace, though it was plain the change in plans brought disappointment to the entire group. "Let's hurry. We must have talked half an hour. And I promised not to be one minute late for lunch."

"We have such a time with meals--never can get folks together," said Cleo, hastily jumping in to her blouse and skirt.

"All the same," insisted Margaret, "we must go to the life saving station right after lunch."

"And how about our tennis game? We promised Mary, you know, to go over for a couple of sets this afternoon."

"We never seem to get to tennis," deplored Louise. "But let's all meet at Borden's at two o'clock, and then we can decide what to do."

"There's Leonore looking for me," called out Grace.

"And there's Jerry looking for me," added Cleo.

"Come on girls, pile in, plenty of room," called Gerald; and those who did not run to his car flocked to the one driven by Leonore, so that the belated scouts made good time, then at least, in getting to their respective cottages.

CHAPTER XIII

A BLANKET OF FOG

THE genuine good times of summer, such as seem to sprout up daily and scatter enough seeds to insure an equal good time on the morrow, had given the scouts such a round of gayety, that a full week dashed by before they could again settle down to work on the mystery of Luna Land.

Girls coming down to the beach from the city, others leaving for the mountains, a round of cottage entertaining, besides events at the casino, swimming contests, hotel entertainments--all these and many other features, served to keep the girls delightfully busy at the gay little summer resort, Sea Crest.

But in spite of such attraction a rainy spell will set in, and set in it did, good and plenty, along about the middle of July. Then it was that the resources of cottage and hotel were taxed to keep the visitors contented.

Mary, at the Colonade, had been a veritable benefactress, for there something was always going on; but Miss Constance Hastings found she could not stand the damp chill of continued rain and heavy fog, so quite unexpectedly she "pulled up stakes," and as Mary would not think of letting her go on to Tuxedo alone, there was suddenly one True Tred less at Sea Crest.

"What would we do without the life saving station and Captain Dave?"

Grace asked, trudging along through the dense fog, toward those quarters. "Come along Weasie, I wouldn't wonder but Helen and Julia will come in from the other way. Do you suppose the sun will ever shine again?"

"Bound to," replied Louise, "but this awful fog!"

"My conscience is mildewed and my temper is blue molded," declared Grace. "Just look at what used to be the ocean."

"Come on over to the pier," suggested Louise. "I love to watch the breakers tear up against the piles."

The boardwalk was all but deserted, not more than the heroic health seekers who walk in all kinds of weather, having courage enough to promenade.

Under the shelter of the pavilion the girls stopped to see if any one they knew might be about, when a figure under an umbrella, far over in a corner protected from the blanket of fog, caught their attention.

"The boy!" said Grace. "Let's go over and speak to him."

"He might get stage fright and again jump overboard," laughingly returned Louise.

"Any port in a storm," quoted Grace. "If I don't talk to some one I'll just have to ring myself up on the telephone. I'm dark blue."

"Nice compliment to your chum," remarked Louise, smiling good-naturedly.

"You know I didn't mean it that way, Weasie. But honestly, why is everything so horrid?"

"Guess because we are used to so much excitement we don't know how to slow down. At least that's what mother is always preaching."

"See, he looks! He sees!" gasped Grace, her voice not so blue or drab in tone as might have been expected.

The boy had lowered his umbrella, and touched his cap to the girls. He even smiled.

"Is it possible? At last!" Grace continued to elocute. "Now just watch me bring him to my feet."

She seized the arm of Louise and led her to the corner where the boy, as ever, was trying to devour his book. At their approach he quickly closed the covers, jammed papers in his pockets, and then waited to speak to the girls who had dragged him out of Round River a month before.

"h.e.l.lo," he greeted them, and both were glad he was boyish enough to be frank, and not stiff.

"Wonderful day," Grace chirped in with ba.n.a.lity.

"If you don't care what you say," he replied brightly.

"But we do, so we'll tell the truth. It's an awful day," declared Louise.

"Don't try to sit here," the boy said. He had risen, of course. "The benches are wet enough to float me as the river did. Come over to the other end. The wind doesn't drive the fog in there."

Louise and Grace followed him, glad of the prospect of a little chat to break the storm's monotony.