Mary Jane and Alice felt like queens as they sat there eating their berries and real cream and smelling the odors of broiling ham that came invitingly up the companionway.
“I’m glad we hurried up and got the boat!” exclaimed Mary Jane appreciatively as she scraped up the last bit of cream and the last half berry she had saved for a final tit-bit, “and I’m very glad we’re on a boat that has a pantry, I am!”
“Wouldn’t you like to look over the boat and find your rooms?” asked the captain some half an hour later; “in a few minutes we’ll be turning into the narrow Ocklawaha and then all my attention will be taken up with the steering. I like to have all my passengers comfortably settled so they will feel at home aboard.”
Mrs. Merrill, Alice and Mary Jane followed him around the boat which they thought the most curious they had even seen. It looked like a great two story house with porches front and back and a pilot house set on the upstairs front porch. Of course it was flat bottomed, for the small river they would travel was too shallow in places for any other sort of boat. The captain told them that even though it drew but two feet of water it often went aground and had to be pushed off shore by means of great poles—“that’s the reason we have to carry such a big crew,” he added.
Inside were two floors with bedrooms—staterooms Mary Jane found they were called—all around the sides of each. Mrs. Merrill’s rooms, two of them, were side by side on the upper floor; that was nice for it was easy to speak through the thin wooden wall that was the only partition.
“But I see the wooden shutter is nailed shut,” said Mrs. Merrill as she stepped into the larger room and attempted to raise the old fashioned sliding shutter. “We’re fresh air fiends, Captain,” she explained laughingly, “and I guess I’ll have to trouble you to raise that blind.”
“Well, er—well,” said the captain hesitatingly.
“Of course if it’s too much trouble,” said Mrs. Merrill, in a puzzled voice.
“Not a bit,” answered the captain, “not a bit. But you see, in the night we go through pretty wild country and the trees over-hang the boat. It doesn’t often happen,” he added half apologizing, “but occasionally a snake drops off a tree and gets in if the window is open.”
“Ugh!” shivered Mrs. Merrill, “between snakes and no air, I think I’ll take the poor air one night! I had no idea we were going through such wild regions!” she added a bit skeptically.