"I should say not!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey. "What is there to be afraid of, just in a noise?"
"Let's all go!" suggested Harry.
"Good!" cried Mr. Bobbsey, for he wanted his children not to give way to foolish fears. They were not "afraid of the dark," as some children are, and from the time when they were little tots, their parents had tried to teach them that most things, such as children fear, are really nothing but things they think they see, or hear.
"Aren't you coming, Dinah?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey, as they all started for the lower part of the houseboat.
"No'm, I'll jest stay up heah an'—an' git a breff ob fresh air," said the colored cook.
"Come on, children," called Mr. Bobbsey, with a laugh. "We'll very soon find out what it was."
They went down off the deck, to the passageway between the kitchen and dining-room. This place was like a long, narrow hall, and on one side of it were closets, or "lockers," as they are called on ships. They were places where different articles could be stored away. Just now, the lockers were filled with odds and ends—bits of canvass that were sometimes used as sails, or awnings, old boxes, barrels and the like. Mr. Bobbsey opened the lockers and looked in.
"There isn't a thing here that could make a crying noise, unless it was a little mouse," he said, "and they are so little, I can't see them. I guess Dinah must have imagined it."
"Let's listen and see if we can hear it," suggested Mrs. Bobbsey.
All of them, including the children, kept very quiet. Snap, the trick dog, was still gnawing his bone in the kitchen. They could hear him banging it on the floor as he tried to get from it the last shreds of meat. Snoop, the black cat, was up on deck in the sun.