She threw open the windows of the close cab, and took a long breath of the delicious sea air.  It was a hot evening towards the middle of July, but a slight breeze rippled the little waves in the harbor, and then travelled up and up until it reached the girl in the dusty cab.

The Northburians were most of them out on the water.  No one who knew anything of the ways of Northbury expected to see the good folk in the streets on an evening like this.  No, the water was their highway, the water was their pleasure-scene.  Each house owned a boat, each garden ended in steps against which the said boat was moored.  It was the tiniest walk from the supper room or the high tea-table to the little green-painted boat, and then away to float over the limpid waves.

All the girls in Northbury could row, steer—­in short, manage a boat as well as their brothers.

There was a view of the straggling, steep little High Street from the water; and the Bells now, in a large white boat with four oars, and occupied at the present moment by Mrs. Bell, fat and comfortable in the stern, Alice and Sophy each propelling a couple of oars, and the blushing, conscious Matty in the bow, where Captain Bertram bore her company, all saw the old cab, as it toiled up the hill in the direction of Rosendale Manor.

“Do look at Davis’s cab!” exclaimed Matty.  “Look, Captain Bertram, it’s going in your direction.  I wonder now, if any one has come by the train.  It’s certainly going to the Manor.  There are no other houses out in that direction.  Do look, Captain Bertram.”

“Lor, Matty, you are so curious!” exclaimed her sister Sophy, who overheard these remarks from her position as bow oar.  “As if Captain Bertram cared!  You always do so fuss over little things, Matty.  Even if there are visitors coming to the Manor, I’m sure the captain doesn’t care.  He is not like us who never see anybody.  Are you, Captain Bertram?”

“I beg your pardon,” said the captain, waking put of a reverie into which he had sunk.  “Did you speak, Miss Bell?” he continued, turning with a little courteous movement, which vastly became him, towards the enamored Matty.

“I said a cab was going up the hill,” said Matty.

“Oh, really!  A cab is an interesting sight, particularly a Northbury cab.  Shall I make a riddle for you on the spot, Miss Bell?  What is the sole surviving curiosity still to be found out of Noah’s ark?”

Matty went off into her usual half-hysterical laughter.

“Oh!  I do declare, Captain Bertram, you are too killingly clever for anything,” she responded.  “Oh, my poor side—­I’ll die if I laugh any more.  Oh, do have mercy on me!  To compare that poor cab to Noah’s ark!”

“I didn’t; it isn’t the least like the ark, only I think it must once have found a shelter within that place of refuge.”

“Oh! oh! oh!  I am taken with such a stitch when I laugh.  You are too witty, Captain Bertram.  Sophy, you must hear what the captain has said.  Oh, you killing, funny man—­you must repeat that lovely joke to Sophy.”