XXV ON THE DECK OF THE SAN SALVADOR




CHAPTER I

THE ORANGE SILK OVER-BLOUSE


"This doesn't look like the street I came up through!" exclaimed Betty
Gordon. "These funny streets, with their dear old-fashioned houses, all
seem, so much alike! And if there are any names stuck up at the corners
they must hide around behind the post when I come by like squirrels in the
woods.

"I declare, there is a queer little shop stuck right in there between two
of those refined-looking, if poverty-stricken, boarding-houses. Dear me!
how many come-down-in-the-world families have to take 'paying guests' to
help out. Not like the Peabodys, but really needy people. What is it Bobby
calls 'em? 'P.G.s'--'paying guests.'

"I was a paying guest at Bramble Farm," ruminated Betty, still staring at
the little shop and the houses that flanked it on either side. "And I
certainly had a hard time there. Bobby says that these people in
Georgetown are the remains of Southern aristocracy that were cast up on
this beach as long ago as the Civil War. Unlike the castaways on cannibal
islands that we read about, Bobby says these castaways live off the
'P.G.s'--and that's what Joseph Peabody tried to do! He tried to live off
me. There! I knew he was a cannibal.