The Slipper Point Mystery | Page 9

all about who she was. What on earth was she doing here - at "The Bluffs"? A number of them murmured some indistinct rejoinder and one of them, in the background, audibly giggled. Sally heard the giggle and flushed painfully. But Doris was superbly indifferent to it all.
"Do you dance, Sally?" she inquired, and Sally stammered that she did not.
"Then we 'll go down to the river and paddle about awhile," went on Doris. "It's much nicer than stampeding about that hot parlor." The Campbell-Hobart crowd melted away. "Come on, Sally!" said Doris, and, linking arms with her new friend, she strolled down the steps to the river, without alluding, by so much as a single syllable, to the rudeness of that noisy, thoughtless group.
And in the heart of Sally Carter there sprang into being such an absolute idolatry of adoration for this glorious new girl friend that she was ready to lie down and die for her at a moment's notice. The last barrier, the last doubt, was swept completely away. And, as they drifted about in the fading after-glow, Sally remarked, apropos of nothing:
"If you like, we 'll go up to Slipper Point tomorrow, and - I 'll show you - that secret!"

CHAPTER IV
ON SLIPPER POINT
IT would be exaggeration to say that Doris slept, all told, one hour during the ensuing night. She napped at intervals, to be sure, but hour after hour she tossed about in her bed, in the room next to her mother, pulling out her watch every twenty minutes or so, and switching on the electric light to ascertain the time. Never in all her life had a night seemed so long. Would the morning ever come, and with it the revelation of the strange secret Sally knew?
Like many girls of her age, and like many older folks too, if the truth were known, Doris loved above all things, a mystery. Into her well-ordered and regulated life there had never entered one or even the suspicion of one. And since her own life was so devoid of this fascination, she had gone about for several years, speculating in her own imagination about the lives of others, and wondering if mystery ever entered into their existences. But not until her meeting with little Sally Carter, had there been even the faintest suggestion of such a thing. And now, at last - ! She pulled out her watch and switched on her light for the fortieth time. Only quarter to five. But through her windows she could see the faint dawn breaking over the river, so she rose softly, dressed, and sat down to watch the coming of day.
At nine o'clock she was pacing nervously up and down the beach. And when old "45" at last grated on the sand, she hopped in with a glad cry, kissed and hugged Genevieve, who was devoting her attention to her thumb, in the stern seat, as usual, and sank down in the vacant rowing-seat, remarking to Sally:
"Hello, dear! I'm awfully glad you 've come!" This remark may not seem to express very adequately her inward state of excitement but she had resolved not to let Sally see how tremendously anxious she was.
The trip to Slipper Point was a somewhat silent one. Neither of the girls seemed inclined to conversation and, besides that, there was a stiff head-wind blowing and the pulling was difficult. When they had beached the boat, at length, on the golden sandbar of Slipper Point, Doris only looked toward Sally and said:
"So you 're going to show me at last, dear?" But Sally hesitated a moment.
"Doris," she began, "this is my secret - and Genevieve's - and I never thought I'd tell any one about it. It's the only secret I ever had worth anything, but I'm going to tell you, - well, because I - I think so much of you. Will you solemnly promise - cross your heart - that you 'll never tell any one?"
Doris gazed straight into Sally's somewhat troubled eyes. "I don't need to 'cross my heart,' Sally. I just give you my word of honor I won't, unless sometime you wish it. I've not breathed a word of the fact that you had a secret, even to Mother. And I've never kept anything from her before." And this simple statement completely satisfied Sally.
"Come on, then," she said. "Follow Genevieve and me, and we 'll give you the surprise of your life."
She grasped her small sister's hand and led the way, and Doris obediently followed. To her surprise, however, they did not scramble up the sandy pine-covered slope as usual, but picked their way, instead, along the tiny strip of beach on the farther side of the point where the river ate into the shore in a great, sweeping cove.