"Cricket! Cricket!" shrieked both girls, in eager chorus. "Wake--up! wake--up! the--tide's--coming--in. _Crick_--et!"
Cricket, evidently bewildered, sat up, and looked around her, then grasped the situation. Quickly she pulled down her tent, and restored her skirt to its original use. She unlashed her oars, and adjusted them in the oar-locks.
"Push--off--as--soon--as--you--can!" called Edna. "Rock--the--boat--to--loosen--it."
Cricket obeyed instructions. She kept up a steady swaying movement, dipping her oars lightly in the deepening water. At last, like Longfellow's ship, "she starts! she moves!"
"Hurrah!" shouted Cricket, waving her oar, and then applying it vigorously. "I'm off!"
One more determined shove and she _was_ off, and her boat floated in the hollow between herself and the island. It was but a moment's work then to pull in shore. If the two sisters had been parted for a year, they could not have greeted each other more rapturously. They rushed into each other's arms, kissing and hugging each other, while Edna declared she would eat up all the luncheon if they didn't stop.
"If I'm not starved!" cried Cricket, eagerly falling to as soon as the luncheon was opened. "I almost thought I'd eat my shoes out in the boat. It was awfully good of you not to eat anything till I got here."
"There's enough to last us till we get home, anyway," said Edna, munching away at the sandwiches with much satisfaction. "Now tell us, Cricket, what became of you?"
"Nothing became of me. I thought I'd row over home for a drink, and old Billy and the children were down on the beach, and I took them out for a little row, and I played they were castaways from the burning ship. Then I took them in, and sat down to rest, and then I thought it was time to come back for you. I never thought about the tide, and there seemed to be plenty of water around, and suddenly I found the water had all turned into mud."
"Cricket, your stockings are all coming down," interrupted Eunice.
"Yes, I know," said Cricket, coolly, stopping long enough to produce her side-elastics from her pocket. "I took off my stocking-coddies to tie the oars up with, to make my tent. Why, I had lots of fun, girls. I couldn't think of any shipwrecked hero who was ever stuck in the mud, so I played the mud was a desert, and that I was Marco What's-his-name in his shrouded tent, and--"