"Of course I am," came the confident answer, as Mollie poised, in her
dripping bathing suit, on the little dock. She made a pretty picture,
too, with her red cap, and blue suit trimmed with white. "I could feel
the edge of the gunwhale," she went on, "and the stones in it that
keep it down."

"But how can we get it up?" asked Grace, who was sitting on the dock,
splashing her feet in the water. Grace never did care much about
getting wet. Amy said she thought she looked better dry. Certainly she
was a pretty girl and knew how to "pose" to make the most of her
charms-- small blame to her, though, for she was unconscious of it.

"We can get it up easily enough," declared Mollie, wringing the water
from her skirt, "All we'll have to do will be to toss out the stones,
one by one, and the canoe will almost float itself. I can tie a rope
to the bow, and we can stand on shore and pull. Those boys will be so
glad to get it back."

"But can we lift out the heavy stones?" asked Amy, in considerable
doubt.

"Of course we can. You know any object is much lighter in water than
out of it, we learned that in physics class, you remember. The water
buoys it up. You can move a much heavier stone under water than you
could if the same stone was on land. We can all try."

"I never could stay under water long enough to get out even one
stone," declared Grace.