“I hope not!” laughed Uncle Ben. “I was shipwrecked once, and that was enough. But now we are going to stop here. I have to get some rowboats your father has bought.”
He steered the motor craft up to a little pier about a mile from Sunnyside. To this pier a number of small boats were tied. After some talk with a man Uncle Ben tied to the back of the boat in which the Curlytops sat five of the rowboats, strung out one after the other, like beads on a string.
“Are we going to take ’em home?” asked Janet.
“Yes,” answered Uncle Ben. “Your father needs more boats to hire out at his dock near the picnic grounds, and he bought these. I am going to paint them red, like all his boats.”
“May I help paint?” Teddy asked.
“Me too?” cried Janet.
“Well, I’ll see about it,” promised Uncle Ben. “I’m afraid you would get more paint on your hands and faces than you would on the boats. But maybe I’ll let you paint a little with a small brush.”
“That’ll be fun!” cried both children. “Do let us!”
Off they started once more, hauling the rowboats after them in a long line back of the motor craft. Trouble wanted to climb back into the nearest rowboat, but they would not let him, of course.
Uncle Ben was steering the big boat, and pulling the smaller ones, in toward the Sunnyside dock when suddenly something jumped from the water with a splatter of drops and seemed to leap over the rowboat nearest the motor boat. Then the shining object fell back into the lake again with a splash.