“This is better for lazy folks like me than rowing,” said Cathalina.
“We are all pretty tired after our long ride anyway,” said Hilary. “Poor Betty! I don’t believe she could have resisted this, if she had known that the _Greycliff_ was going out. Had she come when you left Cathalina?”
“No; I was only a few minutes behind you girls. I was almost ready when I told you to start on. She was going to gather a flower or two she saw for her book. I imagine she stayed to talk to some of the girls at the pavilion.”
“Eloise couldn’t come, either, had a music lesson. She had forgotten it and went back, after she saw the _Greycliff_ and everything. ‘O!’ she said, ‘There’s that music lesson!’ The next minute she was running up to the hall on the double-quick.”
“How lovely the sky and lake, and the shore, with its trees and cliffs, look when everything is safe and happy!” said Lilian, who was sitting in the bow, watching the water and the clouds, and thinking of Philip.
“Were you thinking of the ‘Wreck of the Hesperus’?” asked Isabel, who sat next.
“No, I was thinking of the boys and of how quickly sometimes things can change.”
Isabel patted Lilian’s hand. Quietly the girls sat as the boat cut through the water and rocked a little when Mickey turned it about to take them back. Nobody felt like singing, but if they had, Betty, lying in the woods, could not have heard them.
Dinner-time came. “Where is Betty?” asked Hilary, who sat at the head of a table now. When there were not enough teachers to go around, senior girls were chosen to grace the head of tables. Betty and the rest of the suite-mates sat at the same table.
“Betty asked me to make a sandwich for her and put it where it would not be eaten. I think she meant to stay in the library. Dorothy, you were reading in the library, weren’t you? Did you see Betty?”
“No, but she may have been in the stacks. I was over by the reference books.”
“She ought not to do this,” said Hilary, “but I won’t see you if you make a sandwich, Cathalina. She will be starved.”
“We had that milk in the afternoon,” said Dorothy.
“I think we have a few crackers in the suite, too,” added Cathalina.
After dinner the girls had their usual time of recreation, some of them outdoors, some at the pianos, some visiting in different parts of the hall; then the three girls of Lakeview Suite met in their rooms and prepared to study. Hilary declared that she could scarcely keep her eyes open and was going to bed as soon as she finished reviewing her French.