g restlessly
out over the water.

"I wonder what can have happened?" muttered Tom Curtis impatiently.
"Here it is, as plain as the nose on your face: the 'Merry Maid' with
four houseboat girls, a chaperon and one other passenger, will join the
'Sea Gull' at the entrance to the Rappahannock River on the southern
side of the Virginia shore near Shingray Point, on August first, at ten
A.M." Tom looked up from the paper he was reading. "We have the time and
the place all right, haven't we, fellows? But where are the girls?"

"Cheer up, old man!" Jack Bolling clapped Tom on the shoulder. "A
houseboat is not the fastest vessel afloat. Who knows what kind of tug
the girls have had to hire to get them here? And a woman is never on
time, anyhow."

"We'll be in luck if the houseboat gets here by to-night, Curtis,"
argued Harry Sears, another member of the motor boat crew of five
youths. "Do slow down; there is no use ploughing around these waters. We
had better stay close to the meeting place. It's after twelve o'clock;
can't we have a little feed?"

"Here, Brewster, stir around and get out the lunch hamper," ordered
George Robinson. "We must all have something to sustain us while we wait
for the girls."

David Brewster's face colored at the other's tone of command, but he
went quietly to work to obey.

"David," interposed Tom Curtis, "come put your hand on this engine for
me, won't you? I will dig in the larder if Robinson is too tired. I know
where the stores are kept better than you other chaps do, anyhow."

"Tom Curtis is a splendid fellow," thought David gratefully. "Miss
Morton was right. He doesn't treat one like a dog, just because he has
plenty of money."

David Brewster and Tom Curtis had traveled down from New York to
Virginia together. Their fellow motor boat passengers they had picked up
at different points along the way. David had come to understand Tom
Curtis pretty well during their trip--better than Tom did David. But
then, Tom Curtis was a fine, frank young man with nothing to hide or to
be ashamed of. David had many things which he did not wish the public to
know.

The houseboat party had arranged to join one another in Richmond. From
there they were to go by rail to a point up the Chesapeake Bay, where
the "Merry Maid" had been kept in winter quarters since the houseboat
trip of the fall before. A tug was to escort the houseboat to the mouth
of the Rappahannock River, where they were to meet Tom an