Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid | Page 8

harm for us to go in there."
"We don't care if it does look queer," declared Phyllis stoutly.
Turning, the girls retraced their steps to the corner.
Outside the swinging door of the small restaurant they hesitated. "I don't think we ought to go in there," argued Eleanor, "it is such a dreadfully rough-looking place."
It was indeed a very common eating house, where the men who worked on the wharves, the fishermen and sailors, were in the habit of getting their meals. The one dirty window showed half a dozen live crabs crawling about inside among the pieces of sea-weed. A row of old pies formed the background.
A moment later they had marched bravely up to the door. Dainty Eleanor shuddered as they crossed the threshold, and even Phil and Madge hesitated as a man's coarse laugh greeted them once they were fairly inside the restaurant room.
"Come on, children," said Madge, with a pretence of bravery she was far from feeling. "We are going into this restaurant to get something to eat. Don't look as if you thought you were going to be eaten. It is rather horrid, but perhaps they will let us have some bread and milk."
The quartette seated themselves at the first table they saw vacant. Just across from it were a number of men with rough, hard faces. They were evidently sailors from the nearby boats. The girls kept their eyes on the table, and Madge gave their order for tea and sandwiches in a low tone to the German boy who came forward to wait on them.
When the boy had departed with their order a silence settled upon the little group of girls. In each girl's mind was the thought that it had been unwise to enter the restaurant. By this time they had come to a realization of the fact that they were the only women in the room.
"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