"Is it deep water?" asked Vi, who seemed started on her favorite game of asking questions.
Russ thought for a minute, looking at the playroom floor.
"'Course it's deep," he answered. "'Bout ten miles deep. What do you ask that for, Vi?"
"'Cause I got to get a bathing-dress for my doll," answered the little girl. "I can't take her on a steamboat where the water is deep lessen I have a bathing-suit for her. Wait a minute. I'll get one," and she ran over to a corner of the room, where she kept her playthings.
"Shall I bring a red dress or a blue one?" Vi turned to ask her sister Rose.
"Oh, bring any one you have and hurry up!" called Russ. "This steamboat won't ever get started. All aboard! Toot! Toot!"
Vi snatched up what she called a bathing-dress from a small trunkful of clothes belonging to her dolls, and ran back to the place where the "steamboat" floated in the "ten-miles-deep water," in the middle of the playroom floor.
"Now I'm all ready, an' so's my doll," said Vi, as she climbed up in one of the chairs behind the big, empty flour barrel that Mother Bunker had let Russ take to make his boat. "Gid-dap, Russ!"
"Gid-dap? What you mean?" asked Russ, stopping his whistling and turning to look at his sister.
"I mean start," answered Vi. "Don't you know what gid-dap means?"