“Is that right, sir?” she asked, her face slightly flushed from the exertion.

“Great boomers, but you have muscle in your arms!” wondered the skipper.  “Now, please hold this wheel just where it is; I’ll take in the anchor.  The man went back home last night.  Don’t need him with all these strong-arm ladies on board.  We’ll be under way in a few minutes now.  I—­Look out there!”

A sudden though slight puff of wind struck the mainsail, sending the sloop ahead directly toward the shore.  But without waiting for orders Harriet sprang to the wheel, pointing the bow of the sloop, that had heeled dangerously, right toward the wind that was blowing in from the sea.

“Fine!” shouted the captain, shipping the anchor and scrambling back to the cockpit as the sloop settled down on an even keel again, the squall drumming on the ropes and stays.  “You’ve sailed a boat before, young lady.”

“Nothing more than a canoe and a house boat.”

“You’ve got the instinct, just the same.  I’ll have you sailing this ‘Sister Sue’ before you’re a week older, and sailing it as well as I could sail it myself.  Where do you wish to go!” turning inquiringly to Mrs. Livingston.

“Up and down the coast, not far out.”

The skipper tacked back and forth a couple of times to clear the bay, then laid his course diagonally away from the coast.  The day was an ideal one, the sloop lay well over and steadily gained headway as she forged ahead with white water spurting away from her bows.

“Gul-lor-ious!” cried Margery.

“Love-a-ly!” mocked Crazy Jane.

Tommy eyed Buster quizzically.

“Yeth, but thith ithn’t the real thea.  You will be singing inthide inthtead of outthide when we get out on the real othean.  It won’t be the gul-lor-iouth then.”

“All we need now to make us a real ship is a wireless machine,” said Harriet, with apparent innocence.

The skipper shot a quick look at her from under his heavy red eyebrows, but Harriet’s face was guileless.

“Would it not be possible to put a wireless outfit on a boat of this kind, Captain?”

“Yes, if you wanted to.  But what good would it do you?”

“I don’t know, except that we might talk with ships far out at sea—­ships that we could not see at all.  Why don’t you put a wireless machine on your little ship?  I think that would be fine,” persisted the Meadow-Brook girl, with feigned enthusiasm.  The skipper growled an unintelligible reply and devoted himself to sailing his boat.  Then Tommy took up the subject, discussing wireless telegraphy with great confidence, but in an unscientific manner that would have brought groans of anguish from one familiar with the subject.

Harriet Burrell through all of this conversation had been watching the skipper without appearing to do so.  That he was ill at ease she saw by the scowl that wrinkled his forehead, but otherwise there was no sign to indicate that their talk had disturbed him.