“Where have you children been, and what have you been doing?” cried Mrs. Martin, when the Curlytops and Trouble walked up to the bungalow Sunnyside a little later.
“I’ve been picking a bouquet for you, Mother,” answered Janet, and she held out the blue flowers. “Aren’t they pretty?”
“Yes, my dear, they are very nice, and thank you for them. But did you have to wade in the lake up to your waist after them?”
“Oh, no. I fell in the mud and then I had to wash off,” explained Janet.
“And I found annuver mud turkle!” cried Trouble.
Then the children told their mother what had happened.
After dinner, when Janet had been washed again and dried and had had clean clothes put on her, Uncle Ben took the three children out on the lake in a little motor boat. It was great fun for them to go riding about the silvery water, the engine of the boat making a chugging sound which Trouble liked very much.
Silver Lake was so large that Uncle Ben did not have time to take the children all around it.
“Some day,” he said, “we’ll put up a lunch and go on a regular voyage all around the shores in the big motor boat.”
“Shall we get shipwrecked?” asked Ted eagerly.