“I am sleepy, too,” declared Harriet, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.  “I can’t imagine what makes me feel so stupid this morning.”  Then, remembering, she became silent.

“If you would go to bed with the children and get your regular night’s rest, you wouldn’t be so sleepy in the morning,” Jane answered with apparent indifference.  Harriet regarded Jane with inquiring eyes.  “I wonder if Jane really suspects that I was out of the cabin in the night, or whether it was one of her incidental remarks?” she reflected.  “I’ll find out before the day is ended.”

“Am I right, darlin’?” persisted Jane, with a tantalizing smile.

“Right about what?”

“Being up late?”

“I agree with you,” replied Harriet frankly, looking her questioner straight in the eyes.  “I am losing altogether too much sleep of late.”

“We didn’t lothe any thleep latht night,” added Tommy.

“You certainly did not, my dear; nor did Margery nor any of the others unless it were Crazy Jane,” declared Harriet with a mischievous glance at Jane McCarthy, who refused to be disturbed by it or to be trapped into any sort of an admission.

“Girls, girls, aren’t you coming in?” Miss Elting rose dripping from the bay and peered into the cabin.  “Come in or you’ll be too late.”

“At once, Miss Elting,” called Harriet.  “It has taken me some little time to get awake.  I am awake now.  Here I come.”  She ran out of the cabin and sprang into the water with a shout and a splash, striking out for the opposite side, nearly a quarter of a mile away.  She had reached the middle of the bay before the guardian caught sight of her and called to her to return.  The Meadow-Brook girl did so, though it had been her intention to swim all the way across the bay and back.

In the meantime the other girls had begun their swim.  Jane was splashing about in deep water, Hazel doing likewise, while Margery was swimming in water barely up to her neck.  Tommy, on the other hand, appeared to be afraid to venture out.  Every time a ripple would break about her knees she would scream and run back out of the way.

“’Fraid cat!” jeered Margery. “’Fraid to come in where the water is deep.”

“Yeth, I am,” admitted Tommy.

“I told you so, I told you so,” shouted Buster.  “I always said she was a ’fraid cat, and now she has shown you that I am right.”

“Who is a ’fraid cat?” demanded Miss Elting, pulling herself up on the beach with her hands.

“I am,” answered Tommy, speaking for herself.

“Who says you are?”

“Buthter.”

“Margery, I am ashamed of you.  You have evidently forgotten that Grace showed how little she was afraid when she was lost at sea the other night,” chided the guardian.

“Yeth, I’m a ’fraid cat.  But I’d rather be a ’fraid cat than a fat cat!” declared the little, lisping girl with an earnestness that made them all smile.  Harriet came swinging in with long, steady strokes, the last one landing her on the sand with the greater part of her body out of the shallow water.