The next second the girl was transformed.  Tossing her big hat aside and giving her hair a quick brush, she laid firm hold upon the wheel and instantly forgot all else.  Her eyes narrowed to a focus which nothing escaped, and Stewart gave a little nod of gratified pride and stepped back a trifle to watch her.  Captain Boynton’s face showed his appreciation and Polly’s was radiant.  The old coxswain muttered:  “Well, well, you get on to the trick of that, lassie.  You might have served on a man-o-war.”

They were now well out in the river and making straight for the railway bridge.  Peggy alert and absorbed was watching the current as it swirled beneath the arches.  “How does the tide set in that middle arch, coxswain?” she asked.

“Keep well to starboard, miss,” he answered.

Peggy nodded, and gave an impatient little gesture as a lumbering power boat, outward bound seemed inclined to cut across her course.  “What ails that blunderbuss?  I have the right of way.  Why doesn’t he head inshore?” and she signalled sharply on her siren to the landlubber evidently bent upon running down everything in sight, and wrecking the tub he was navigating.  Then with a quick motion she flicked over her wheel and rushed by, making as pretty a circle around him as the coxswain himself could have made.  “Holy smoke, but ye have given him the go-by in better shape than I could myself.  Whoever taught ye?”

“A navy captain down at Annapolis,” answered Peggy, as she shot the launch beneath the bridge.

“Well, he did the job all right, all right, and I may as well go back and sit down.  Faith, I thought we were as good as stove in when I handed over the wheel to ye, but I’m thinking I can learn a fancy touch or two myself.”

“Oh, no, don’t go.  I don’t know the river, you know, though I want to do my best just to make Daddy proud of me,” answered Peggy modestly.

“Well then he should be a-yellin’ like them crazy loons yonder on the observation train—­that’s what he should,” nodded the coxswain.

Neil Stewart was not yelling, but he wasn’t missing a thing, and presently Peggy ran the launch into a clear bit of water near the three-mile flag.

Bringing her around, she issued her orders, her mind too intent upon the business in hand to be conscious that all on the launch had been watching her with absorbing interest.  Anchors were thrown over fore and aft in order to hold the launch steady against the current, then turning the wheel over to the admiring coxswain, Peggy wiped her hands upon her handkerchief and holding out her right one to Captain Boynton, said: 

“Thank you so much for letting me try.  It was perfectly glorious to feel her respond to every touch and thread her way through all that ruck.”

“Thank me?  Great Scott, child, you’ve done more for the whole outfit than you guess.  Stewart, my congratulations.”

Poor Peggy was overcome, but the boys and Polly were alternately running and praising her, every last one of them as proud as possible to call Peggy Stewart chum.