“I told you it was just a knob of land sticking out from the shore,” said Tom. “It’s nearly a quarter of a mile long.”

Polly lifted her head, and drew in a deep, long breath of the cool, salty air that blew in from the southeast. She looked down at the “Knob,” as they soon grew accustomed to calling the island. There was a fine incurved beach for bathing, with a great, tumbled mass of rocks at the farther end that rose higher and higher at the end pointing towards the bay. Young willow and scrub pine grew short and thick wherever they could get a footing in the rock crevices, and there was plenty of grass, but it was tall and sharp pointed and tinted queer colors from the tide.

“You can walk away out yonder into the water at low tide,” said Tom. “The beach is a fine one, better than we’ve got at Fair Havens. There ain’t any deep holes at all. That’s a pretty good landing too. It lops over some, but that won’t hurt anything. You’ll get used to it, and it’s easy to moor to.”

The girls scrambled after him down the rocky path, and followed him as he picked his way over the sand bar, stepping from one grass hummock to the next.

“This is high and dry at low tide,” called back Tom. “Guess you’ll have to jump some places now.”

“Some places!” repeated Sue, holding up her clean linen skirt in dismay. “I’m hopping like a frog now, and my shoes are wet. We’ll need a balloon or an air ship when the tide comes in.”

“Here’s the house,” came Tom’s cheery voice, beyond a sand dune, his bare feet having carried him swiftly over the places where the girls had to pick their way. And all at once they saw it, the place they had dreamed of, and talked of, and hoped for, for nearly two weeks. It was gray, and lopsided like the landing place, and as weatherworn as the Carey’s paling fence. Some fisherman had built it years ago, and shielded it from the northwest winds by putting it close against the sand dune; facing south, it looked out over the Sickle. He must have had a variable mind, that first fisherman, for he had started out with two rooms, then added a lean-to, and yet another lean-to, and then had built a third one that leaned fairly over on the original lean-tos. The lean-to portion of the house then leaned all together on the sand dune, but the front part was up on a rock foundation, and there was a fair-sized porch across it that Mrs. Holmes had built, when the boys had taken it for a summer camp.

But in spite of the new supports under the flooring, it had a decided tilt to leeward, from generations of storms that had whacked it, and battered it, and all but demolished it. A tall flag staff still reared itself squarely in front of the steps, and at sight of it Polly ran ahead of the others.

“What is it, Polly?” called Ruth, holding to her hat.

“I know what she’s going to do, I know,” cried Sue. “Salute the colors!”

Polly reached the flag staff, and took the “colors” from her reefer pocket, where they had been safely tucked away, against the time appointed. She had made that flag herself. It had been her special contribution to the general belongings of the club, and as Polly ran it gallantly up to the top of the pole, the girls sent up a good, round cheer, and even Tom threw his cap high in the air.

“’Rah! ’Rah! ’Rah!” he shouted. “She’s a-flying a good one.”

“That’s a blue triangular pennant,” explained Sue. “It’s a golden sun on a field of blue.”

“A golden sun rampant, isn’t it?” Crullers put in.

“No, dear, couchant,” Sue laughed. “Why will you talk about heraldry when you don’t know anything about it. I’ve studied it all up.”

The sand had drifted up around the porch base in regular hillocks, nearly to the railing.

“When we get too tired to use the steps,” Polly said, “we can just step over the railing, and slide down.”

“I can’t find a door,” said Isabel, doubtfully, as she came around the house from a tour of inspection, and Kate began to chant, teasingly,

“What’s that funny little cupola up on top?” called out Polly.

“That’s the lookout,” explained Tom. “Lots of houses alongshore have them. It’s so the women folks at home can climb up there in foul weather, and look out towards sea through glasses, to see if the ships are coming home.”

“Oh, I like that,” Polly said. “I’ve got ever so many ships that are coming home some day, and when I get discouraged after this I shall build a lookout in my heart and climb up there with a spy glass and see how the weather is out to sea, and maybe I’ll see a sail.”

“Polly, you sentimental goose,” laughed Kate, slipping one arm around the commodore. “You never see things just as they are.”

“I see them the way they ought to be, and that’s better,” Polly smiled back. “Where’s Tom?”

“Prying off the planks that are nailed over the doors and windows,” Sue called, and presently they all went inside.

There were no plastered walls or ceilings. All the rooms were finished off like the interior of a cabin, with narrow boards nailed close together, and there was a spicy, pungent odor through the house, like spruce woods. One thing the girls hailed with delight. Right up through the center of the house rose a great, old-fashioned round rock chimney. Three fireplaces opened into it, and you could stand in any one of them and look up at the blue sky. Long shelves stretched across the tops of the fireplaces, and there were iron cranes on each side on which to hang pots.

“Where are the grates?” asked Isabel.

“Aren’t any grates,” responded Tom. “You just lug in an armful of driftwood and pile it on those rocks and start her up. We piled rocks around outside for fenders, ’cause father thought maybe the sparks would hit the flooring some day.”

“Won’t we just pile on wood there on chilly nights, girls?” Ruth exclaimed, kneeling down and holding out her hands, as if she could feel the blaze even then.

“And sit around on cushions, and tell stories, and eat toasted marshmallows, and Aunty Welcome’s hermits,” added Ted.

“Oh, poor Aunty,” cried Polly, in sudden dismay. “I never told her where we were going, and she’ll think we’re drowned sure. Let’s hurry, now, and be businesslike. How much furniture is here, Tom?”

“Ain’t any at all,” said Tom, cheerfully. “Just some chairs, and a table, and some beds, and dishes.”

“Well, that’s all we’ll need,” Polly told him. “Did you think we wanted pianos or consoles?”

“Those aren’t furniture,” said Tom. “Those are just fixin’s.”

“Where can we get fresh water?” Kate asked.

“There’s a well at our place. I’ll bring you up some twice a day, and oftener if you need it. You can freshen the salt water for cooking. Mother’ll show you how.”

“I think it’s splendid to have near neighbors like you,” said Polly. “Maybe we’ll be able to do something for you before the summer’s over.”

Tom poked his bare toes into the sand sheepishly.

“Oh, that’s all right. Mother and Nancy are mighty glad you’ve come. It gets pretty lonesome way out here on the Sickle. I don’t mind it so much, because I’m going into the coast service with father as soon as I’m old enough, but Nancy wishes she had some girls to talk to. There’s plenty over in the village, but that’s too far off, and the crowd at the Orienta or the hotel and cottages, we folks don’t see much of. My Aunt Cynthy says she’ll take Nancy any time over in the village and bring her up, but mother says she guesses she’ll hang on to her only girl. Nancy likes you girls, because she says you seem different.”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, you’re not all starched up the way the others are over at the hotel.” He squinted one eye at the sun. “It’s half-past twelve, and more too.”

Regretfully the girls took leave of their new kingdom, but as they walked back along the bay shore road to the hotel, they turned every now and then, and saw the little blue and gold pennant streaming valiantly in the breeze, and as Polly remarked, it certainly did look home-like.

They did not stop at the Carey cottage going back. It was a good mile around to the hotel, and the Admiral was waiting for them on the veranda.

“Polly, you go up and calm Welcome,” he said, the first thing. “She’s been down to me about sixty-nine times to ask me to send the life-savers after you. You run up before you have your lunch and show her there are no bones broken.”

Polly obeyed gladly enough. The old colored mammy was very dear to her, and her arms had been the only shelter she had known when the Admiral was away from Glenwood ever since her own mother died.

“Deed, chile, if I ain’t powerful glad to see you!” Welcome exclaimed, as soon as she set eyes on her. “Praise de Lord, oh, mah soul! Has you been way off in dat blazin’ sunlight and no parasol? If you ain’t de carelessest chile I ever did see. You’ll get so freckled dere won’t anybody know you under your bridal veil, you mind what I say, now.”

“No, I won’t, Aunty, truly. Listen. It’s just the happiest sort of a place, and I know you’ll love it. There are big fireplaces and a wide porch to sit out on, and you can see way out over the ocean and over the bay too. I don’t see why we can’t go over as soon as we have finished luncheon.”

“How do you intend totin’ me through all dat sand?” asked Aunty with dignity.

“We’re not going to tote you at all. We’re going to roll you,” laughed Polly, as she reached up, and took the wrinkled brown face between her fresh young palms. “Listen, you old dear. Just you go down and have your dinner, and then make out a list of what we need to cook with, and I’ll send Tom over to the village after it this afternoon.”

“Is dere anything to cook in?” asked Aunty, still unmollified.

“One iron kettle, one spider, a baking pan, and two sauce-pans,” enumerated Polly. “And some dishes.”

“Well, it’s a mighty good thing I packed up plenty in de boxes,” said Aunty solemnly, and with deep gratification. “I felt it in mah bones it was a desert isle, and I’ve done kept mah eye on dose boxes ever since we left Ole Point Comfort behind us. I’ve watched ’em, and I’ve sat on ’em, and I just know dey’s safe.”

Polly said nothing, but she thought hard. She had forgotten all about the two big packing-cases that contained their bedding, and general camp outfit. The last she had seen of them, they had been stowed away on the lower deck of the Hippocampus for safekeeping.

“Don’t you fret one bit, dear,” she said at last, “I’ll ask grandfather where they are, and if they’re not here, then they must be there. Stoney told me when I lost my cap overboard, a thing is never lost as long as you know where it is. Just make out that list, Aunty, for us, and we’ll hurry up with luncheon, and coax grandfather to let us go over this afternoon to the club-house for good.”

It didn’t require very much coaxing. Polly herself broached the subject at the table down in the long, shady dining-room, and the Admiral told her she might do as she pleased.

“I’m not going to interfere except when it’s absolutely necessary. I’ll just stop here for a while till you’re on your course, then I’ll go South again until the regatta. You manage your own fleet. I’ll be on that veranda for a week longer, though, and if there’s any mutiny or danger, just send a couple of rockets and I’ll come alongside.”

“Wireless, Admiral Page, wireless,” Kate corrected, in her amusing way. “We’re strictly up-to-date, you know. Polly will have a wireless apparatus over there sure as can be, and you’ll get many a ‘C.Q.D.’”

“Grandfather, dear,” began Polly, suddenly remembering, “where are the two big boxes with all our things in?”

“On the way to the island this minute,” answered the Admiral. “That is once I forestalled you, young lady. But here’s one question I cannot solve, so I shall have to put it before the club. How are we to get Aunty Welcome to the island?”

Polly meditated. So did the rest, but Ruth solved the problem.

“When the wagon comes back from taking the boxes over, send Aunty back in it.”

Polly hugged her joyously.

“Whatever should we do, Grandma,” she cried, “without you to solve things for us. Here I’ve been thinking we’d have to blindfold her the way they do elephants to coax them on board a ship. No, thanks, I don’t care for any shortcake,” this to the pretty waitress, as she was about to place a goodly slice beside her plate. “I must hurry. Crullers, dear, you may have it all.”

“Polly,” whispered Isabel, as they were leaving the long dining-room, “those two girls at that little table, over near the veranda doors, have been looking at us ever since we came in.”

“Maybe they like us,” Polly said, happily. She always took the cheeriest view of everything as a matter of course. As the Admiral and his fleet of clipper builts, as he called them, passed the table Isabel had mentioned, Polly looked at the girls seated there, quite frankly and interestedly. There was no doubt but what they were sisters, and Polly liked them at first sight. The elder was about sixteen, and the younger seemed to be about Polly’s age.

“I wonder who they are,” Isabel said, when they were up in the long, cool, double parlors. “I like them and I wish we could get acquainted with them before we leave. They’re very well dressed, Polly.”

Polly laughed at the serious, earnest tone.

“Isabel always judges people by their raiment,” she declared. “I know if she met John the Baptist in camel’s hair, and Peter Pan in white flannels like the Senator wore, she would drop Peter a gracious courtesy, and not notice anyone else at all.”

“Oh, Polly, I would,” cried Isabel. “I am not as bad as that, but I do believe that clothes show character, just as cleanliness or good manners do. I have seen ever so many persons whose clothes may have cost lots of money, but they looked like patchwork quilts. These girls didn’t. They were dressed with taste, and their dresses were hand embroidered linen too. I do wonder who they are. I like the way they do their hair, braided, then tied up Dutch fashion with two big bows.”

“Do you want yours that way, you blessed old looking-glass?” Polly crossed over to where Isabel sat, and began to arrange her long fair braids in the same fashion. “It’s easy enough. All you do is cross them over, so, and then tie your ribbon on, and let it flutter a little, like a butterfly bow. You need very wide ribbon to make it look right. There, now observe yourself, Lady Vanitas.”

Just then Crullers whispered: “Here they come.”

While Isabel was trying to balance herself on a bamboo tabourette so that she could catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the mantel, the other girls entered from the corridor leading to the wide staircase, and hesitated.

“Dorothy,” called a pleasant voice from the hall. The elder girl looked over her shoulder, caught Polly’s glance, and smiled, then they both went on down the hall.

“Ready, mates?” asked the Admiral just then and Polly inquired who the other two girls were.

“Commodore Vaughan’s daughters from the Orienta Club,” answered the old Admiral. “And very mannerly children they are, too. You will meet them later. I was talking to the Commodore just a few minutes ago.”

“Well, I’m glad we shall know them, anyway,” said Polly, as she went up to where Aunty Welcome was waiting for them. “I wonder, girls, whether grown people speak of us as ‘children.’ I feel half-way grown-up now. I don’t think I’m a child.”

“Listen to her,” laughed Ruth. “And she’ll be fifteen next December. Don’t you remember, Kate, in the ‘Mikado,’ where somebody tells the three little maids they are not young ladies, they are only young persons.”

“Has you been a-finding dat teehee’s nest again?” asked Aunty Welcome, severely, as they all trouped into the room the Admiral had reserved for them. “Ain’t you ’shamed to come along a hotel corridor giggling like geese. And you-all from Virginny, too. Ain’t you got any State pride?”

“Oh, we will be good, Aunty,” pleaded Sue and Ted. “Don’t scold us. Just wait till we get out on an entire island all our own.”

“I speck you’ll bring my hairs in sorrow to de grabe before you get done,” Aunty prophesied, but her eyes twinkled, as she looked around her at her charges.

It was past three o’clock before the caravan started. First a wagon was sent around by the shore road, with Aunty Welcome and the luggage.

“That’s a pretty hefty load, son,” the Admiral told the sunburned youngster who had agreed to do the hauling down to the Knob, as all the shore people called Lost Island. He laughed, and slapped the reins on the horses’ backs.

“Guess the colts will get there all right, sir,” he said. “They can both of them swim.”

“We’ll be there right away, Aunty,” Polly called, receiving a reassuring wave from a large, dark green cotton umbrella.

“Now, I begin to feel as though we were getting down to business,” Kate said, decidedly, as she came from the telephone booth in the hotel office. “I’ve arranged for our groceries, and they say they can send a team over about four, because they deliver goods every morning and afternoon to the hotel and cottages, and we might as well receive ours that way, too.”

“Did you order stuffed olives and plenty of chocolate, Kate?” Isabel asked.

“No, ma’am, I did not. We must have solid food, the Admiral says, and no nonsense. Plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit.”

“Well, I like the incidental trimmings myself,” mourned Isabel.

“Ready?” asked Polly, and the caravan moved, Polly and the Admiral bringing up the rear.

Just then the two Vaughan sisters came down the hotel steps dressed in dark blue linen yachting suits, and as they passed, girl fashion, they smiled at the strangers without the formality of an introduction. Polly could not wait for time to ripen the acquaintance, but paused and spoke to them in her impulsive way.

“I only wanted to say,” she began, as the other girls walked on with the Admiral, “that we are from Virginia, from Queen’s Ferry, and we belong to a—a—our yacht club. You can see the flag flying over yonder where the shore curves before you get to the Point. We’re going to live there all summer, and we’d be ever so glad if you would come down and see us.”

“We’d love to,” Dorothy spoke up, warmly. “This is my sister Bess. We’ll try to come over some day next week.”

“If you do, we’ll show you how to sail a yacht,” Polly said encouragingly, but the girls laughed.

“Oh, we go out every day on the bay in our yacht. You can see her from here. We belong to the Junior Sailing Club at the Orienta.” Bess pointed eagerly down to the hotel landing. “She is named the Nixie.”

Polly followed the direction in which she pointed, and saw a slender, close-reefed yacht lying just below the boat landing. It was clean and looked well-dressed, the same as its owners did. From where she stood Polly caught a sparkle of polished brass work around the cockpit.

“We have plenty of boats, but we haven’t learned how to sail them yet,” she said. “As soon as we do, we’ll race you.”

“That’s a challenge, remember, and we take it up,” returned Dorothy, laughing, and Polly hurried ahead to join the others, feeling that she had won two friends who seemed very much worth while keeping.