from the little galley, mingled with the aromatic foretaste of coffee. Aunt Kate was busy inside. The girls were laughing out in the cabin, or on the lowered after-deck. It was the next morning—which makes all the difference in the world.
"I'm afraid we're going to have a shower to-day," observed Amy, musingly, as she looked up at the sky. A light fog hung over the river.
"Will you ever forget the awful shower that kept us in the deserted house all night?" asked Betty, as she arranged her hair. "I mean when we were on our walking trip," she added, looking for a ribbon that had floated, like a rose petal, under her shelf-dresser.
"Oh, we'll never get over that!" declared Mollie, who was industriously putting hairpins where they would be most serviceable. "And we couldn't imagine, for the longest time, why the house should be left all alone that way."
"Now I'm going to begin my lesson," announced Grace who, having gotten herself ready for breakfast, took up the book showing how various sailor knots should be made. With a piece of twine she tied "figure-eights," now and then slipping into the "grannie" class; she made half-hitches, clove hitches, a running bowline, and various other combinations, until Amy declared that it made her head ache to look on.
