“I told you ‘t wasn’t.  If you don’t b’l’eve me, what’s the use o’ my sayin’ so again?”

“Well, I’m sorry, Bub.  I just caught a sight of you as I turned my head, an’ I thought—­”

“Oh, well, never mind what you thought; we’ve heard enough ’bout that cake!  Shove your foot one side a little?  I want to drive another spile there.  Them’s the hitchin’ spiles on the inside.”

“What you buildin’?” asked Mandy.

“Can’t you see for yourself?  What’s built on spiles, I’d like to know!  Meetinghouses, may be you think.  This is Lewis’s dock; all the day boats and barges stop here!”

“Where’s the water?” asked Mandy.

“Oh, you wait till high tide, ’bout four o’clock this afternoon, ‘n’ you’ll see water enough!”

Just then, a boy in a blue blouse, with a basket of fish over his shoulder, came whistling along.

“Perry!  Perry Kent!  Where you goin’?” Bub called.

“Down to little cove, to clean fish.”

“Oh, can’t I go along and help?  I can scale a herrin’ first-rate; father said so.”

“Aint herrin’; they’re shad; got to be cleaned very partic’lar, too.  But come along, if you want to.”

“Bub,” said Mandy, in an eager whisper, “oh, Bub, wait for me!  Baby’s fast asleep.  I’ll lay him right down here, in his shawl; the nets’ll keep the sun off, ‘n’ he’ll be real cozy ‘n’ nice till we get back.”

“Why don’t you take him up to the house?” said Perry, looking with some interest at Mandy’s bundle. “’Taint a very good place for him here.  You’ll find us at the cove, all right.”

“He’ll wake up sure, if I try to carry him up the hill.  See how nice he lays; and I’ll hang the end of the shawl over this net-pole.  I can see it plain enough from the cove.  If he wakes up, he’ll be tumblin’ round and pull it off, so I’ll know when to come back for him.”

“Well, it takes a girl for contrivance,” Perry said; and it was something in his manner rather than the words which made Mandy, as she followed the two boys, vaguely feel she was disapproved of.

The cove was a half-circle of pebble beach, washed by the ripples of a slowly rising tide, with a wall of gray slate rock at the back.  Hemlock-trees leaned from the steep wooded cliff above, the shadows of their boughs moving with the wind across the sunny face of the rock.

It was very warm and still and bright.  Mandy climbed to a perch high up in the twisted roots of an old hemlock, who, having ventured too far over the edge of the cliff, was clinging there, desperately driving his tough toes into the crevices of the rock, and wildly waving his boughs upward and backward as if imploring help from his comrades, safe in the dark wood above.

The river spread broad and bright below her.  Mandy listened, in happy silence, to all the mysterious rustlings and twitterings and cracklings in the wood above, and the sounds, far and near, from the river below.  Now and then she looked to see if the shawl still fluttered from the net-pole.  She was glad she came, and it seemed but a very little while before the fish were all cleaned, and the boys, sitting on a rock, skipping pebbles, and watching for Perry Kent’s father, who was coming in his boat to take the fish up to the hotel.