Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/138

122 seriously.” Then, as a peal of laughter came from the quartette in the bow, Mrs. Barlow herself smiled again.

Amy, meanwhile, had turned from poetic thoughts to the more practical. One was the cost of the row-boat that she and Fritz had hired by the hour soon after reaching  Marblehead in the early afternoon. They had meant to keep it an hour, or an hour and a half at the most, but now  Amy trembled to think what the bill would be, and she  wondered if the man from whom they had hired the boat,  from their long absence might not think that some accident  had befallen them, or that they had made way with  the boat. Then there was the question of her mother; what would she think if they failed to meet her! Half-past five was to be the time, and how strange it would seem to Mrs. Redmond to wait out there by the Fort looking vainly  for Amy and Fritz. But still, even her reflection on this did not prevent her enjoying the present pleasure. Tom had taken up his mandolin, and Philip his banjo, and the  quartette was singing one college chorus after another.

Brenda had her camera under her arm, and aimed rather extravagantly now at distant objects, a boat at full sail, or  a rocky headland, now at some of her friends on the boat. The latter were often in shadow, and there was no doubt that Brenda was wasting a great deal of film. But economy had never been one of Brenda’s strong points.