"You won't have to, Freddie," laughed Bert.
"Speaking of that mean farmer reminds me of the poor boy who ran away from him," said Mrs. Bobbsey to her husband, when the children had gone to bed. "I wonder where he is to-night, in this storm?"
"I hope he has a sheltered place," spoke the father of the Bobbsey twins.
Not very much damage had been done by the storm, though it was a very hard one. In the morning the children could see where some big tree branches had blown off, and there had been so much rain, that the water of the creek was higher. But the houseboat was all right, and after breakfast, when they went up the creek again, they stopped and got the pieces of broken rope, where the Bluebird had been tied before.
The houseboat then went on, and at noon, just before Dinah called them to dinner, Nan, who was standing near her father at the steering wheel, cried:
"Oh, what a lot of water!"
"Yes, that is Lake Romano," said Mr. Bobbsey. "We'll soon be floating on that, and we'll spend the rest of our houseboat vacation there."
"And where shall we spend the rest of our vacation?" asked Bert, for it had been decided that the houseboat voyage would last only until about the middle of August.
"Oh, we haven't settled that yet," his father answered.
On and on went the Bluebird, and, in a little while, she was on the sparkling waters of the lake.