“Hello,” called Percy, adding boisterously as he recognized the girls:  “Well, by all that’s holy, if it isn’t the Outdoor Girls!  Thought you never came over to this side of the river.”

“We don’t,” Betty answered, the hand that still gripped the wheel shaking nervously now that the danger was over.  “And I don’t believe we ever will again, either!”

“I say, your teeth are chattering,” cried Percy, looking at Betty in open admiration.  In the old days, Percy had tried hard to win favor in Betty’s eyes, but the latter had always treated him with a good-natured indifference not unmixed with contempt that had been very hard for the young dude to bear.  During the years he had still admired Betty from afar and hated Allen Washburn for being the “lucky one.”  So now he hastened to make the most of what he thought was an opportunity.

“Come on over to the Point with me and Derby here,” indicating the young fellow in the other racing craft who had drawn his boat up close to them and was looking on with interest.  “We will get you something to steady your nerves a bit.  We had a pretty narrow squeak that time, and it’s no wonder it upset you a little.”

He was supposedly addressing all the girls, but his eyes were only for Betty.  As for her, she suddenly had a startlingly clear mental picture of what her father would think were some one to tell him that his daughter and her chums had been seen at the “Point” with Percy Falconer and a friend of his.

In days gone by Percy had been very insipid, his mind entirely on his clothes; now he had become a sport, and the report was that he caroused around not a little.

Betty turned to the youth with a decided little shake of her head, though her eyes were smiling.

“I think we shall have to go right back,” she said.  “It looks as though it were going to rain.  Thank you just as much,” and she began to ease her motor boat gently away from the other craft,

“Oh, I say,” Percy cried, disappointedly and a little angrily, for out of the corner of his eye he could see that his friend was laughing at him, “we would only keep you for a moment or two.  You needn’t be afraid of us.  We won’t bite, you know.”

“We don’t know you well enough to be sure even of that,” said Mollie, coming suddenly and flippantly into the conversation.

But Percy took not the slightest notice of her and, as Betty was slowly but surely widening the distance between the Gem and his boat, he leaned forward eagerly.

“Betty, let me see you some time.  How about to-morrow night?”

And because Betty was always kind to every one and was sorry for Mollie’s flippant speech, she said, quite unexpectedly, even to herself, “All right.”

Then she turned the Gem around and started for home, conscious that her chums were gazing at her in speechless amazement.

“Betty!” cried Grace, horrified.  “You are never going to let Percy Falconer come to see you, are you?”