When they turned Max and Gwen had disappeared.

"I do wonder what they were planning to do?" said Polly, "and why Gwen
seemed unwilling to do it, whatever it was."

"So do I," said Rose, "because Max always wants to do the wildest
things," to which Sprite added; "And you can't often find anything
wilder than Gwen would enjoy."

It happened that Max and Gwen had disappeared behind a rough shanty
that laborers were using for a toolhouse.

"Now don't be a fraidie-cat!" Max was saying. "What makes you act so?
I called you a 'brick' the other day because I said you dared to do
things that any girl but you wouldn't dare to do. Now here you are,
acting just the way other girls act. 'Fore I'd be 'fraid to sail in a
tub!" He hoped to make her do it.

"Well, if you're not afraid to, why don't you do it, instead of asking
me to do it?" snapped Gwen.

"Oh, so I can tell the other boys how brave you are," replied Max.

"They wouldn't think anything of me a doing it," he continued, quite
regardless of his grammar, "because I'm a boy, and I'm s'posed to be
brave, anyway, but you're a girl, and that's different.

"Come! Get in! I'll shove it!"

Gwen paused for a moment, then:

"Give me your hand!" she said.

She was afraid, but her silly vanity prompted her to do it. She knew
that neither of her playmates would dare, and Max had promised to tell
the other boys of the brave feat.

Max took her hand, and she sprang into the tub, crouching on the
bottom, as he shoved it off into water a bit deeper than that in
which they had been standing.

The tub was roughly made and anything but clean. The workmen had used
it for holding cement, but had emptied it, and left it on the beach
where Max had found it.

He was very fond of coaxing others to do things that he himself would
never have done. Now, safe on dry land, he stood cheering Gwen for her
bravery.

"Well, come and wade out here and get me back," she cried. "I've
proved that I dared to do it, and that's enough!"

"Wait till I get the fellows to come and see you out there in the tub.
They might not believe me if I just told them!" shouted Max, and he
raced off at top speed, paying no heed to Gwen's shrieks. No one could
have guessed if Max heard her and yet kept on running, or whether the
sound of his own footfalls drowned her cries.

CHAPTER IV

WHAT MAX DID

Max ran up the beach at top speed, intent upon finding his "chum," and
telling him that Gwen was