The Slipper Point Mystery | Page 6

to keep from floating in shore, she nodded another approving assent. But her country unaccustomedness to conversation held her tongue-tied for a time.
"Where's Genevieve?" demanded Doris.
"Oh, I put her to bed at half-past six most always," said Sally. "She's usually so sleepy she can't even finish her supper. But I miss her evenings. She's a lot of company for me."
"She's a darling!" agreed Doris. "I just love the way she cuddles up to me, and she looks so - so appealing when she tucks that little thumb in her mouth. But, Sally, will you forgive my saying it? - you look awfully nice tonight." Sally turned absolutely scarlet in her appreciation of this compliment. Truth to tell, she had spent quite an hour over her toilet when Genevieve had been put to bed, and had even gone flying to the village to purchase with her little hoard of pocket-money the pink ribbon for her hair.
"But I wonder if you'd mind my saying something else," went on Doris, eyeing her companion critically. "You 've got the loveliest colored hair I ever saw, but I think you ought never to wear any colored ribbon but black on it. Pink's all right for very light or very dark people, but not for any one with your lovely shade. You don't mind my saying that, do you? Sometimes other people can tell what looks best on you so much better than you can yourself."
"Oh, no. I don't mind - and thank you for telling me," stammered Sally, in an agony of combined delight that this dainty new friend should approve her appearance and shame that she had made such an error of judgment in selecting the pink ribbon. Mentally, too, she was calculating just how long it would take her to save, from the stray pennies her mother occasionally gave her, enough to purchase the suggested black one. While she was figuring it out, Doris had something else to suggest:
"Sally, let's be good friends. Let's see each other every day. I'm awfully lonesome when I'm not with Mother, - even more so than you, because you've got Genevieve. I expect to stay here all summer, and they say there are very few young folks coming to 'The Bluffs.' It's mostly older people there, because the younger ones like the hotels on the ocean best. So things won't be much better for me, even during the season. Can't we be good friends and see each other a lot, and have a jolly time on the river, - you and Genevieve and I?"
The appeal was one that Sally could scarcely have resisted, even had she not herself yearned for the same thing. "It - it would be fine!" she acknowledged, shyly. "I'm - I'm awfully glad - if you want to."
They drifted about idly a while longer, discussing a trip for the next morning, in which Sally proposed to show her new friend the deserted mill, up Cranberry Creek. And Doris announced that she was going to learn to row, so that the whole burden of that task might not fall on Sally.
"But now I must go in," she ended. "It's growing dark and Mother will worry. But you be here in the morning at half-past nine with your boat, if we'd better not take the canoe on account of Genevieve, and we 'll have a jolly day."
Not once during all this time, had there been the least reference to the mysterious hint of Sally's during the earlier afternoon. But this was not at all because Doris had forgotten it. She was, to tell the truth, even more curious about it than ever. Her vivid imagination had been busy with it ever since, weaving all sorts of strange and fantastic fancies about the suggestion. Did the river have a mystery? What could its nature be, and how had Sally discovered it? Did any one else know? The deepening shadows on the farther shore added the last touch to her busy speculations. They suggested possibilities of every hue and kind. But not for worlds would she have had Sally guess how ardently she longed for its revelation. Sally should tell her in good time, or not at all, if she were so inclined: never because she (Doris) had asked to be admitted to this precious secret.
They beached the canoe, still talking busily about the morrow's plans, and together hauled it up in the sea-grass and turned it bottom upward. And then Sally prepared to take her departure. But after she had said good-bye, she still lingered uncertainly, as if she had something else on her mind. It was only when she had turned to walk away across the beach, that she suddenly wheeled and ran up to Doris once more.
"I - I want to tell you something,"