"Well, I guess it is a hard one and I don't know the answers to hard ones," said Ward sadly.
Margy could not guess and Jess, after two wild attempts, also gave up.
"Let me think," said Artie, when it was his turn, and he went off into one of his thinking spells from which he emerged several minutes later with the suggestion that perhaps there was no answer.
"Isn't it a trick riddle?" he asked engagingly.
"Certainly not!" his sister announced coldly. "Do you know, Fred?"
Fred rose to his feet and bowed, not an easy thing to manage in a small boat going at high speed and trembling from bow to stern with the bursting energy of her busy engine.
"I have the honor, ladies and gentlemen," squeaked Fred, in a high voice, "to tell you the answer to the riddle. Why must the model of a boat be always correct? Because it must be shipshape."
"Ha-ha!" boomed Larry. "That's a good one. Because it must be always shipshape! Now I wonder who thought that up!"
As usual, Ward and Artie wanted an explanation.
"Shipshape means neat and tidy, in good order, nothing out of place," recited Fred obligingly. "Everything as it should be—correct, in other words."