acy," she went on, "but I have my reasons. It may amount to
nothing, but I will not be satisfied until I have proved or disproved
something I have suspected since I came here."

CHAPTER XVII

THE LIGHT KEEPER'S STORY

"Hurray! She's going!"

It was Jack who cried this.

"'She starts, she moves, she seems to feel----'"

"As though we'd catch a wiggling eel!"

Thus Ed began the quotation, and thus Walter ended it. The boys had
been working in the motor boat, and had only now, after several hours,
succeeded in getting it to respond to their labors. The motor started
with a sound that "meant business," as Jack expressed it.

"Let's go for a run," suggested Norton.

"Better wait for the girls--it's their boat," returned Walter.

"And we'd better pump some of the water out of her," added Jack. "She
leaks like a sieve."

"Pump her out, and by the time the girls are here she'll be ready," spoke
Walter.

"It was that carbureter all the while," declared Ed. "I knew it was!"

"I was sure it was in the secondary coil," came from Jack.

"And you couldn't make me believe but what it was one of the spark plugs,"
was Norton's contribution. "But it was the carbureter, all right."

"All wrong, you mean," half grumbled Walter, whose hands were covered with
grease and gasoline. "Some one had opened the needle valve too far."

"Well, let's get busy with the pump," Jack said. "It's too nice to be
hanging around the float."

The _Pet_ was soon in as good condition as hasty work could make her, and
on the arrival of the girls the whole party went out for a spin, though
they were a bit crowded. Cora was at the wheel, a position her right to
which none disputed.

"I don't know these waters around here," she admitted, "but Rosalie said
there was a good depth nearly all over the Cove, even at low tide."

"Rosalie being the mermaid?" asked Norton. "I should like to meet her."

"I have asked her over to the bungalow," went on Cora. "But I warn you
that she is a very _sensible_ girl."

"Meaning that I am not?" challenged Norton.

"Not a girl--certainly," observed Jack.

"Not sensible!" exclaimed Norton.

"Don't give them an opening, boy," cautioned Ed. "You don't know these
girls as I do."

"Don't flatter yourself," was the contribution from Bess.

"Why don't you talk?" asked Jack of Belle.

"She's too interested in how deep the water is, and wondering if she will
float as well as dripping Dick," mocked Eline