catching her breath, "you're going
just the other way!"

"O, Solly Rosenberg," echoed Lina, "you're going the wrong way! There's
the shore, off there!"

"Well, well," said Solly, his "stiff upper lip" very white, "we're
coming round to it after a while: you just sit still."

"Yes," said Johnny, puffing very hard, and churning the foam with his
paddle, as if he were whipping eggs with a beater, "yes, girls, _we_
shall row round to it after a while, _if_ you'll only keep still!"

I dare say Johnny thought the most of this commotion was made by his
paddle. He was quite as consequential, in his way, as the fly who sat on
a wagon-wheel, and said to the wagon, as it rattled down hill, "What a
noise we make!"

"We wouldn't put for the shore at all," continued Johnny, "if it wasn't
for you girls."

At that moment a remarkably high wave leaped over the side of the boat,
and wet Johnny to the skin.

"Just enough wind to make it pleasant!" gasped the little fellow.

"O, dear! O, dear!" sighed the girls, in despair.

"Ugh! how my arms ache!" groaned Johnny, stopping to rub them. "Guess I
wouldn't say much if I was nothing but a girl, and didn't have to
paddle!"

"O, you needn't fuss with that paddle any longer, Johnny Eastman," said
Solly, who had hitherto paid no heed to the little boy's vigorous but
useless struggles; "you just drop it; it doesn't amount to anything."

"What! what!" cried Johnny, looking very much insulted. "How are you
ever going to get ashore without ME, I'd like to know?"

All this while the boys were growing crimson in the face from the
gigantic efforts they made, and the girls very pale with fright. Solly
kept repeating,--

"Don't you be afraid, girls!" but his voice faltered as he said it; and
as for Freddy Jackson, the trembling of his mute lips was as eloquent as
speech. The two boys might put on what blustering airs they pleased--it
all amounted to nothing; there was more power in the wind than in the
muscles of their small arms. The boat would not go near the shore:
anywhere else but there. The sky grew more and more threatening, and the
wind increased in force.

"We're going to be drow--drow--drownded!" screamed Dotty; "and I told
you so: I knew it before! O, if Susy was here with a shingle!"

"We're going to be drownded!" cried Lina; "and, Solly Rosenberg, you
hadn't oughter made me come!"

"And you told an awful, wicked story," struck in Dotty, "for, Solly
Rosenberg, you said yo