The little captain nodded emphatically. “I am proud of you already, David,” she declared warmly. “I think it is perfectly wonderful that you have been able to take two years’ work in college instead of one, beside helping Mr. Preston on the farm. You are going to make me dreadfully ashamed when I come back, by knowing so much more than I. Phil enters Vassar this fall and Tom will graduate at Columbia in another year. I am going to try to study on the yacht, but I shall be so busy seeing things that I know I won’t accomplish very much. Just think, David, I am going around the world in our own boat with my father and Captain Jules! Isn’t it wonderful how one’s dreams come true and things turn out even better than you expect them to? I believe, if it weren’t for leaving my beloved houseboat chums and Mrs. Curtis and Tom, and Miss Jenny Ann and you, I should be the happiest girl in the world.”
“I don’t suppose I count for much, Madge,” answered David honestly, “but I am more grateful to you than you can know for putting me on that list. Some day——” The young man hesitated, then his sober face relaxed and a brilliant smile lighted it. “It’s pretty early for a fellow like me to be talking about some day, isn’t it, Madge?”
Madge laughed, though she blushed a little and answered nothing.
Just then Phyllis Alden and a young man in a lieutenant’s uniform joined Madge and David Brewster.
“Lieutenant Jimmy is saying dreadful things, Madge,” announced Phil mournfully. “He says he is sure you won’t come back home in a year. You’ll stay over in Europe until you are grown up or married, or something else, and you’ll never be a houseboat girl again!” Phil’s voice broke.
Lieutenant Jimmy looked uncomfortable. “See here, Miss Alden,” he protested, “I never said anything as bad as all that. I only said that perhaps Captain Morton and Captain Jules would stay longer than a year. Almost any one would, if they owned that jolly little yacht.”
“I’ll wager you, Lieutenant Jimmy, a torpedo boat full of the same kind of candy that you sent us at the end of our second houseboat holiday, that if you come down to this dock one year from to-day you will see our yacht, which Captain Jules has named ‘The Little Captain,’ paying her respects to the Statue of Liberty. Come, let’s go and make Father and Captain Jules convince him, Phil,” proposed Madge, hugging Phyllis close to her, as if the thought of being parted from her for so long as one year was not to be borne.
“I’ll take that wager, Miss Morton,” replied Lieutenant Jimmy jokingly, “because I would be so awfully glad to have to pay it.”
“Madge simply must come back on time, Lieutenant Jimmy,” whispered Phil, nodding her head mysteriously toward a young woman and a man. “It’s a state secret, and I ought not to tell you, but Miss Jenny Ann and Mr. Theodore Brown, the artist, are to be married a year from this fall. We must all be at the wedding. Miss Jenny Ann couldn’t possibly be married unless every one of the ‘Mates of the Merry Maid’ were there. If we can arrange it, Miss Jenny Ann is going to be married on the houseboat. Won’t it be the greatest fun?”
For the moment Phil was so cheered at the thought of another houseboat reunion, though a whole twelve months off, that she forgot that her best beloved Madge was to leave in another half-hour for her trip around the world.