As for Captain Jules, when the girls had fairly gone he lighted his pipe and strode along the line of the shore. "It's a funny thing, Madge," he said, addressing the monkey, "but when a man gets an idea in his head, everything and everybody he sees seems to start the same old idea a-going. I wish I had asked her to tell me her surname. I wonder if she is the real Madge?" CHAPTER VIII THE WRECK OF THE "WATER WITCH" The girls began their row to the "Merry Maid" with all speed. They had had such an interesting morning that they did not realize how the time had flown. They did not know the exact hour now, but they feared it would be after twelve before they could rejoin Miss Jenny Ann. The sun was so nearly overhead and shining so brilliantly that the effect was almost dazzling. Madge and Phil did not try to see any distance ahead in their course. Lillian, however, was on the lookout. There were several inlets opening into the larger water-way down which the girls were rowing. Boats were likely to come unexpectedly out of these inlets, and the girls should have been far more watchful than they were. "It's too bad about Mrs. Curtis and Tom not coming on to Cape May as soon as we expected them, isn't it?" remarked Phil, resting for half a moment from the strain of the steady pulling at her oars. "I hope they will arrive soon, before we have the responsibility of entertaining Mrs. Curtis's friend, Philip Holt. It won't be much fun to have a strange man following us about everywhere, even if he should turn out to be nicer than we think he is." Phil was the stroke oar. She was talking over her shoulder to Madge, who was paying more attention to her friend's conversation than to her rowing. "Oh, I think Mrs. Curtis and Tom will be along soon," she rejoined. "I felt dreadfully when we received the telegram this morning. But now I hope Mrs. Curtis's brother will get well in a hurry. Perhaps they will be here almost as soon as this Philip. I'll wager you a pound of chocolates, Phil, that this goody-goody young man can't swim or row, or do anything like an ordinary person. He will just think every single thing we do is perfectly dreadful, and will frighten Tania to death with his preaching. I know he thinks her fairy stories are lies. He told Mrs. Curtis that Tania never spoke the truth." Madge lowered her voice. "I am sure we have never caught her in a lie. I suppose this Philip will think my exaggerations are as bad as Tania's fairy stories. I hate too literal people." "Dear me, whom are you and Phil discussing, Madge?" inquired Lillian, leaning over from her seat in the stern with Tania, to try to catch her friends' low-voiced conversation. "If it is that Philip Holt, you need not think that he will trouble us very much when he comes to Cape May. He is just the kind of person who will trot after all the rich people he meets, and waste very little energy on those who have neither money nor social position."