suppose if we'd taken your boat out, we'd have brought it back, not being mermaids."
"That's what I argued down at the camp," he meditated. "I said to them, 'you boys have been up to some devilment or other, and I'll git you yet. It ain't likely that them three old—them three ladies that can't row a stroke or swim a yard would take the Witch Hazel out in the middle of the night in a storm, sink the boat, and swim home four miles in time to put up their crimps and get breakfast.' "
"Thirtainly not," Aggie said with injured dignity, "I can't thwim a thtroke."
Carpenter spat on one of our whitewashed cobblestones. "It's what you might call ree-markable," he observed. "Not another soul on the island, and won't be 'til the Methodist camp meeting next week; one of the boys at the Watermelon Camp with a blanket on instead of his pants and a bandage on his head, and the Witch Hazel stole last night by somebody who cut through her painter with a pair of scissors and takes her out with two oars that ain't mates."
The young man with the kimono dropped it carelessly into Aggie's lap and straightened with a glance at her stricken face.
"Scissors!" he repeated. "Oh, come, Abe, you're no detective. How the mischief do you know whether the rope was cut with scissors or chewed off?"
Abe dived into his pocket and brought up two articles on the palm of his hand.
"Scissored off or chewed off," he said triumphantly. "Take your choice."
There, gleaming in the sunlight, were TisKs buttonhole scissors and Aggie's upper teeth!
"Found them in four feet of water at the end of the boat dock," he said, "where I left the Witch Hazel last night. If them teeth ever belonged in a fish, then I'm a dentist."
I remember the next ten minutes through a red haze; I knew in a dim way that Aggie had clutched at her teeth and disappeared; I heard from far off Tish's voice, explaining that Aggie had dropped the scissors in the water the previous afternoon, and had lost her teeth while lying on the dock trying to fish them up —the scissors, of course—with a hairpin on the end of a string. And finally, with the line of the waterfront undulating before my dizzy eyes like a marcel wave—which is a figure of speech and not a pun—I realized that Carpenter and the sleeveless and neckless young man from the camp were retreating down the path, and I knew that the ordeal was over.
I believe I fainted, for when I opened my eyes again Tish was standing in front of me with a cup of tea, and she had been crying.
"You needn't feel so badly about it," I said, when I had taken a sip of the tea. "There are times when to lie is humanity."
"It isn't that," Tish whimpered, breaking down again, "but—but the wretches didn't believe me!"
"No," I echoed sadly, "they didn't believe you."
"I could think of so many better ones now," she wailed.
"Never mind," I said, with a feeble attempt to console her, "they won't jail us for lying, anyhow. We are reasonably safe, Tish, unless Mr. Carleton has Aggie arrested for assault and battery."
But he did not. The only court concerned was the marriage license court, from which you will know that this is a love story. Even if it does begin with a mangy dog.
At least Aggie said it was mange; her parrot had the same moth-eaten look before it died. But Tish has always maintained that it was fleas. She says they breed in the grass, and attack dogs in swarms in hot weather.
Chapter II.
It was the Dog
The dog was put ashore under our very-noses, by the crew of a passing launch. :We were knitting on our veranda that afternoon, looking across at Sunset Island, which is four miles away. Carpenter was not in sight, and from down the beach came the yells and splashes that told that the college boys at the Watermelon Camp were bathing. We were sitting with our backs to them, when Tish said suddenly :
"There is a launch coming in."
There was, a very fine one, although handsome is as handsome does, as the colored man said about the hippopotamus. For as the launch steamed past, a man in a white uniform threw something with a thud on to the dock. It was a dog. The next moment they headed out into the lake again, paying no attention to Tish, who ran down the path and tried to signal them with the raffia basket she was making.
The dog came up and sniffed at her.
Now we never had any dogs on the island, even in the season. Tish's uncle had been bitten by a dog once, and although he never had hydrophobia, he was always strange afterward. They say that when he coughed it was exactly like a bark, and the very sight of a cat upset him terribly. Also, although the family never said much about this, I have heard that after he died they found quite a collection of bones in his upper washstand drawer. And my grandmother saw him once eating raw meat mixed with onion, between slices of bread! So when we bought the island, and sold parts of it for cottages, we always put in the agreement of sale: "No intoxicants, no phonographs and no dogs."
You may imagine how we felt, therefore, when we saw the dog following Tish up the path, and biting at her heels. (When a dog bites at your heels, and isn't wagging his tail, he is not playing; he is in earnest. It is much like that line in The Virginian —"When you say that, smile!". But this dog did not smile.)
Tish shouted to us, as she came, to run and shut Paulina, her cat, in the spare room, and to give her her catnip ball (the cat, not Tish). And then she came up and dropped on the porch step and covered up her feet, and the creature sat down before her and dared her to move.
That was the most terrible afternoon of my life. He sat there and drooled over the step, and growled now and then, and Tish told about her uncle, and Aggie said she knew a man who had been attacked by a bulldog, and the only way they got him loose was to give him—the dog—a hypodermic of poison and pry him off after he died.
To make matters worse, there did not seem to be a soul on the island. The boys from the camp had disappeared; Carpenter's cabin was closed and locked- At tea time the dog heard Paulina wailing up-stairs and he made a hole in the screen door and went after her. He had chewed almost through the guest room door before Aggie called him off with the chops for supper.
That decided us.
About eight o'clock that evening, while the creature was gnawing at a leg of the dining-room table, we held a whispered conference, and Tish came forward with a plan. It was very daring, and Aggie immediately objected. "It's all very well," she said, "to sit here in a rocking-chair and talk about rowing four miles to Sunset Island, with not one of us knowing anything about a boat, and Lizzie told by that fortune teller last spring that she would die by drowning. Not only that. How are you going to get the dog into the boat?"
Tish leaned forward cautiously. The Dog was still gnawing in the next room.
"Chloroform him!" she whispered. "Wait until he gets sleepy. Then take Lizzie's bath sponge, soak it with your chloroform liniment, Aggie, and when he's stupefied, carry him down and dump him in the boat."
"Why not let Carpenter do it, in the morning?" Aggie objected. She was green with nervousness.
