“Aunt Cynthy, Polly?” asked the Admiral. “Who is the lady?”
“She’s the mother of the roses,” Polly told him, mysteriously, as she raised her bouquet for him to catch a whiff of its fragrance. “Tom’s aunt. And she’s going back to the Orienta with us to watch the races. Now, the carry-all won’t carry all, at all. It will just about carry seven people.”
“I have a conveyance here some place,” spoke up the Doctor. “At least I did have. I can take two with me. Wait just one minute.”
He disappeared around the corner, and came back driving a trim top carriage.
“It’s the hotel keeper’s,” he told them. “I didn’t know these children were coming to meet you in state, so I plotted to carry you off myself. Now, I think I had best take Mrs. Bardwell with me, and the thinnest one of the girls.”
“Thinnest!” exclaimed Sue. “Thinnest! You won’t find any thin people in this club after six weeks on Lost Island. Crullers, won’t you please ride with the Doctor, just as a matter of revenge?”
And Crullers, whose one strong point was her weight, agreed willingly to share the seat with the doctor and Mrs. Bardwell.
It was a gay ride back along the bay shore road. The Doctor was an old acquaintance of Aunt Cynthy’s, for he loved flowers and had often stopped on his way to the post-office to look at her garden and chat awhile over the white cross-bar fence.
When they arrived at the club house, the whole place seemed filled with people. All of the summer colony had turned out in state to do honor to the regatta, as well as the visitors. Up in the balcony that overhung the bay, a band played, and the view out on the water was one the girls never forgot all their lives.
After they had greeted the Commodore and Mrs. Vaughan, they found chairs at a good angle of vision, and established themselves around Aunt Cynthy as chaperon, while the Doctor and Admiral Page went out on the committee boat.
The bay was brilliant in the sparkling morning sunshine. It was a perfect day. Crullers said the sky looked higher than usual, and the clouds drifted lazily up from the southwest. The great sails were hoisted, and curved out in great white swells, as the wind filled them. Orders rang out sharply, as the white-clad sailors ran here and there, and finally the start was made at 11:02 sharp. One after another, eight yachts dipped to the wind, crossed the imaginary line of starting, and the fifteen-mile race was on.