"Those horrid flat-boats heaped with coal?"
"Yes. Think of the yardage record we're making. Five thousand yards a day!"
Marian rubbed her aching eyes.
"I don't know a yardage record from a bushel basket," she sighed. "What is that queer box-shaped red boat, set on a floating platform?"
"That is the engineers' house-boat, where your brother is to live. Mayn't we take you aboard to see?" urged Burford.
Marian stepped on the narrow platform and peered into the cubby-hole state-rooms and the clean, scoured mess-room. She was too tired to be really interested.
"And that funny, grass-green cabin, set on wooden stilts, up that little hill—that play-house?"
Burford laughed.
"That's my play-house. Sally Lou insists on living right here, so that she and the babies and Mammy Easter can keep a watchful eye on me. You and Sally Lou will be regular chums, I know. She is not more than a year or so older than you are, and it has been pretty rough on her to leave her home and come down here. But she says she doesn't care; that she'd rather rough it down here with me than mope around home, back in Norfolk, without me. It surely is a splendid scheme for me to have her here." He laughed again, with shy, boyish pride. "Sally Lou is a pretty plucky sort. And, if I may say it, so are you."
Marian managed to smile her thanks. Inwardly she was hoping that the marvellous Sally Lou would stay away and leave her in peace. She was trembling with fatigue. Through the rest of the trip she hardly spoke.