This was only the beginning of trips. Leslie, Sarita, Dalton, and very often Elizabeth, went about bay and sea in the new launch, which Leslie named at once the “Sea Crest Yacht,” only a variation of their own name, she said. Sarita thought it delightful that their name was so appropriate to these circumstances and declared that their prospective cabin ought to be called Sea Crest instead of the Eyrie. But Leslie reminded her that their father had suggested an “Eyrie.”

“We’ll have an ‘eagles’ nest’ on the rocks, perhaps, unless it does seem very much better to build in the woods,” said Dalton bareheaded, keeping the wheel steady as the little yacht cut the waves.

“Perhaps Dalton would prefer some other name for his boat, Leslie,” suggested Elizabeth, by way of reminding her sister not to be too possessive.

“He told me that I might name it,” Leslie replied, “didn’t you, Dal?”

Dalton nodded. “It’s the Secrest yacht,” said he. “I like Leslie’s idea. I’m teaching her to be at the wheel, Beth, and all about the engine, too. I hope that you have no objections.”

“It will probably be too late if I have, but do use judgment, children!”

“We will, dear old emergency brake!”

“Poor old Beth! She didn’t want to be so grown up and careful, but had to be!” As she spoke, Leslie put her arm around Elizabeth, who was standing beside her.

“I’m letting you all share the responsibility now,” laughed Elizabeth. “I hope that I’ll not regret it!”

“If we get reckless, Beth, we’ve learned that we have to take the consequences,” Sarita inserted.

“Yes, but we don’t like consequences, Sarita.”

“Hear, hear!” came from Dalton, “but Les can run the launch if she keeps away from the rocks. Luckily the entrance to the bay is broad enough, and the bay itself is remarkably free from rocks that we can’t see. Tom has given me full instructions, and he even drew a little chart for me.”

In two weeks time the “yacht” and a newly painted rowboat were safely tied or anchored within the little cove below the Eyrie, as they had decided to call their rocks, whether a cabin or lookout were ever built there or not. It was Dalton who suggested a “lookout,” a small shelter among the rocks, where Elizabeth could paint, and from which all of them could watch the changing sea, or be protected from a storm. As Dalton told Leslie and Sarita, perhaps it was a good thing that they were hindered in their first plans and work. “We’ll have a much better idea of what we want to do, for being around the place a while.”

Although Dalton occasionally felt uneasy about matters, his materials had not arrived for the cabin, and the man whom he had expected to help him was delayed with other work. They heard nothing from the young lawyer at home about an abstract of title. Indeed, he had not replied to their letter at all, which seemed strange, considering his previous devotion to Elizabeth.

Mr. Ives had not appeared again, nor had they seen anything of Peggy. She, very likely, was more hurt with her fall than she had been willing to admit. Dalton wrote another letter to the lawyer and after learning that one of Bill’s sons had charge of the little village post office, he hired a horse and rode himself to the town at the railroad station, to see it safely on its way. Just why he should be so suspicious of Mr. Ives, he did not quite know, but it was instinctive.

Fishing trips in the rowboat were successful. They were managing to have good meals at slight expense. It was the other part of their undertaking that took the money, Dalton’s boat and the prospective building. But they had no regrets. There would be enough to do it and Dalton told Beth that with her attaining fame from some picture of Steeple Rocks, and his learning to fish and handle a boat, they would be “fixed for life.” It was a great adventure and the lure of Pirates’ Cove brought much speculation to Leslie and Sarita.

“What would it be called Pirates’ Cove for,” asked Leslie, “if no pirates ever went there? It isn’t any worse with rocks than lots of other places around here where we go, and I think that the story of a whirlpool or current is all nonsense!”

“That’s all right, Les,” said Dalton, who was standing by her on the Sea Crest at the time when she made this remark. “Watch your wheel, Sis. There. Turn it that way just a little now. Good girl. But all the same, you keep out of Pirates’ Cove, Leslie. So far as the name is concerned, there are plenty of Pirates’ Coves on this coast. I’ve no doubt. It’s a good name for any rather mysterious place.”

“Yes, it is,” said Sarita, who was waiting her turn at the wheel, “but that is it. When we have a Pirates’ Cove right at our door, so to speak, why not get some good of it?”

Dalton laughed at this and said that they would row around into the Ives’ territory “one of these days. We can see all the rocks closer there.”

“Not I,” firmly said Leslie, not knowing that she would be the first one to go. “It might remind Mr. Ives of our existence, if he should see us. Let’s let well enough alone, folks. When we hear that we have an abstract of title and everything, you can go over to Steeple Rocks, Dal, and tell him so.”

“I’ll begin to cut down a few trees, then,” said Dalton, with a grin. “That will bring him over fast enough.”

But their freedom from Mr. Ives was due to another cause, as they found out at once; for when they came back from this trip, they found Peggy Ives at the camp, in animated conversation with Beth. Beth was showing Peggy their camp and she was admiring the convenience of their “bungalow tent,” when Leslie and Sarita appeared in the door.

“Oh, here is our circus lady,” cried Sarita before she thought. She and Leslie had so dubbed Peggy, but they had not intended to announce it.

Peggy’s eyes smiled at Sarita, however, as she turned from an examination of the ruffled dressing table. “Is that what you call me! I was quite a performer, wasn’t I? I just came over to tell you how much obliged I am that your brother made me jump before I got to that awful place further on. I came to say ‘thank you’ to him, and then I want you all to come over to Steeple Rocks to have dinner with us.”

“Thank you, Miss Peggy,” Elizabeth said at once. “I scarcely think that we can do that. You see, we have chiefly camping clothes, and we are not ready for dinner at a home like yours.”

“Oh, we don’t always dress for dinner. Mother lets me come in to the table in my sport things. She wants to see you. Father had to go away on business the very next day after I fell, and we haven’t seen a thing of him since. I would have been over before, but I did give my ankle a terrible wrench and then I was sick a little, too. Mother said it was ‘shock,’ but my nerves are all right!”

“I’d think that the scare you had would do something to them,” Sarita remarked.

“It is ever so good of you to ask us over,” Leslie added, glad that Elizabeth had started the “regrets,” “but Beth is right about our clothes, Peggy. You’d better visit us here. We’ll have a beach party and chowder. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“Yes, it would. I’d like to; but still, we want to have you come to Steeple Rocks, too. Where are the clothes you traveled in? You will like my mother. She is nicer than my father, and I am very sure that she will be disappointed if you can not come. She told me to bring you to-day if you would, and if you had something else that you were doing to-day, you could come to-morrow. Then she didn’t know whether you had a car, or horses, or anything, if you thought it too far to walk. It’s terribly rough for a car, of course.”

They were outside, now, sitting upon the various seats that Dalton had provided, from stones, or logs found in the woods.

“No, we haven’t any car or any horses, but it is not too far for us to walk,” gently said Elizabeth. “I still think, though, that, as Leslie says, it would be better for you to visit us here. Stay to supper with us. Dal is fishing now. Sometimes he gets a big fellow that we can scarcely eat up.”

“I wouldn’t dare stay this time, thank you. Mother would think that I’d had another accident. Besides, the boy that you saw the other day is with me. He stopped back in the woods on the way over from the road. I’d love to stay, though.” Peggy looked as if she were almost ready to yield, in spite of better judgment.

“We’ll hurry up the meal,” Leslie suggested. “There comes Dal now. Go and ask your friend to come too. It doesn’t take any time to cook fish on our portable stove, and it will be such fun to have you.”

“I’d love to see how you do it! Well, I’ll go and call Jack and see what he says.”

Dalton reached the tent just as the “circus lady” was disappearing into the woods. “‘How now, Malvolio?’” he inquired facetiously. “More communications from the Ives?”

“Peggy came to say ‘thank you,’ Dal,” Beth replied. “She is a dear little girl,—though for that matter, I imagine that she is only a year or so younger than Leslie and Sarita.”

“She just told me that she is fourteen,” said Leslie, who had walked a little distance with Peggy. “She did it in such a funny way, saying that perhaps we thought her too young to ‘play with us,’ but she would like to know us. Imagine, Dal.” Leslie looked at her brother with a funny smile that Elizabeth, naturally did not understand.

“Why is that strange?” she asked. “I know that Dal does not like Mr. Ives, from something he said; but why shouldn’t he like Peggy?”

“There isn’t any reason at all,” Dalton answered. “She did give me a lame shoulder and a few bruises and scratches on our first acquaintance, to be sure, but that was nothing.”

“This sounds as if your meeting Peggy were in a fight. Dal,” Sarita said, “but hurry up with that fish. Leslie and I will help you clean it, while Beth gets the things ready to cook it.”

Thus it happened that neither Leslie nor Sarita could offer a fishy hand to Jack Morgan, who came hurrying into camp with Peggy, his blue eyes smiling and his frank face interested, as they could clearly see. He acknowledged the introductions with the manner of a boy used to meeting people, and laughed when Leslie and Sarita displayed their hands, cleaning fish with Dalton over some paper which could be gathered up and burned later.

“I hated to be hurried away that day when Peggy scared the Ives family nearly to death, but her father and I did not know but she might be seriously hurt after all; and after being shaken up by the ride home, she was glad enough to be taken care of in a hurry, weren’t you, Peggy?”

“M’m-h’m,” nodded Peggy, watching operations with the fish. “If Dad hadn’t been so cross over nothing, I wouldn’t have minded so much.”

“He was worried, Peggy,” said Jack. Leslie thought it good of him to make excuses for his handsome but irritable host.

At once they all liked Jack Morgan. He turned out to be a cousin of Peggy’s, whom Mrs. Ives had invited for the summer at Steeple Rocks. Peggy privately informed Leslie that Jack was worth a dozen of their other guests, most of them friends of her father’s, she said. But almost everyone was grown up, she said, and Peggy had no chums of her own. Sarita and Leslie forthwith invited her to make chums of them, and they were not a little touched at the eagerness with which Peggy accepted the offer.

The little hurriedly-prepared supper broke any remaining ice. When Jack finally rode off with Peggy, both insisted that there must be a beach party at Steeple Rocks very soon, to which all the camping party would come. Beth thought that it would be very pleasant and accepted for the family, which was just as well; but she did not notice that while the rest commented on the kindness of the invitation, none of them committed themselves about coming.

“We did that very well, Dal,” Sarita remarked afterwards. “They know that we’d love to come, but if Mr. Ives appears and says anything, they may remember that Beth was the only one who said anything definite about accepting, and even she said ‘if we can.’ I am pretty sure that they are all regular summer folks with money and clothes and style.”

“It does not sound very well to hear Peggy criticise her father,” Dalton suggested, to the girls’ surprise. They had seen Peggy go up purposely but shyly to Dalton after supper, to say her “thank you,” they supposed, and they had noticed Dalton’s friendly response.

“I thought of it, too,” said Leslie, “and I am sure that Beth did; but at that, Peggy Ives may have reason to dread her father, even though she should not speak so before strangers. I don’t trust him.”

Yet it was Leslie, on the very next day, when she was at the beach, alone, who accepted an invitation to enter the Ives’ launch. She was the first one of the Secrest party to land at Steeple Rocks.