“‘Oo, aye, ’tis nae so bad,’ says Tam. ‘But they are nae honest up there.’
“‘Whit way air they no honest, Tam?’ asks his friends.
“‘Weel,’ says Tam, ‘I aye had my doots all the time; but I made sure the day I bought me a penny-packet of needles. On the outside o’ it, it said there was one thousand needles inside.’
“‘Oh, aye?’
“‘I coonted ’em,’ says Tam, ‘an’—wad ye believe it?—there was only nine hundred and ninety-three!’ And this boat-sliding may look all right,” concluded the Corner House housekeeper, “but, like Tam, ‘I have me doots!’”
As the boat gathered speed, following the one on which Ruth and her companions sailed out into the open lake, the little girls squealed their delight. Even Dot forgot her fears. And Tom Jonah “smiled” just as broadly as he could.
“Oh, Tessie!” Dot gasped. “It is like flying! My breath’s too big for my mouth—just like I was in a swing.”
“I guess you must feel like poor Sandyface did when Sammy sent her with her kittens from our house to his in the fly-a-majig. You remember?” said Tess.
“I should say I did!” agreed Dot in her old-fashioned way. “What an awful time that was, wasn’t it? And Sammy got spanked.”
“Sammy’s always getting spanked,” Tess said coolly.