ad left their raft. To their horror
it was gone! They had forgotten to anchor it, and it had floated out
into the middle of the moat.

This was indeed a predicament! They looked at each other aghast.

"We're marooned, that's what it is!" stammered Aveline. "Raymonde,
you're the silliest idiot I've ever met in the course of my life!"

"Well, I like that!"

"Can't help it--it's the truth! Whatever did you bring me out here
for, on such a wild-goose chase?"

"Why, you wanted to come!"

"I didn't! You've landed me in a horrible scrape. I've been late for
prep. twice already this week, and Gibbie gave me enough jaw-wag last
time, so what she'll say this time, goodness knows! How are we ever
going to get back?"

Raymonde shook her head and whistled. She might have attempted to
defend herself, but Aveline by this time had begun to sob
hysterically, and she knew that arguments were useless. The prospects
of immediate rescue certainly appeared doubtful. Everyone would be
indoors for preparation. No doubt they would be missed, and probably a
monitress might be sent in quest of them, but the house would be
searched first, and then the barns and garden; and it was quite
problematical whether it would enter into anybody's head to walk to
the edge of the moat, and look across towards the island.

"I suppose you can't swim?" asked Aveline, choking back her sobs, and
dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief.

"No; only a little bit when somebody holds me up. Whoever would have
thought of that wretched raft floating off in that fashion? It's too
sickening!"

"Don't you think we'd better give a good shout?"

The girls put their united lung power into the loudest halloo of which
they were capable, but it only scared a blackbird in the orchard, and
provoked no human response. They sat down in a place where they could
be best seen from the mainland, and waited. There were too many
brambles for comfort, and the midges were biting badly. Raymonde began
to wonder whether, after all, the island were as ideal a situation for
a residence as she had supposed. Some lines from a parody on one of
Rogers's poems flashed into her mind:

"So damp my cot beside the rill,
The beehive fails to soothe my ear";

and

"Around my ivy-covered porch
Earwigs and snails are ever crawling."

"It mightn't be just the best place in the world for rheumatism," she
decided, "and probabl