“Have you seen my little boy?” asked Freddie’s mother. “My little girl says he came down here.”
“So he did,” answered the engineer. “I asked him if he was coming to help me run the boat, and he said he would a little later. He had something else to do now, it seems.”
“What?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.
“Well, he said he wanted to go fishing. And as I knew you wouldn’t want him leaning over the rail I showed him where he could fish out of one of the portholes of the storeroom. A porthole is one of the round windows,” the engineer said, so Flossie would know what he was talking about. “I opened one of the ports for him, and said he could drop his line out of that. Then he couldn’t come to any harm.”
“Did he have a line?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.
“Yes, a good, strong one. I guess he must have got it off Captain Crane. He’s a fisherman himself, the captain is, and he has lots of hooks and lines on board.”
“Oh, I hope Freddie didn’t have a hook!” cried Mrs. Bobbsey.
“No’m,” answered the engineer. “I didn’t see any, and I don’t think he did have any. He just had a long string, and I thought all he was going to do was to dangle it out of the porthole in the storeroom. He couldn’t come to any harm there, I knew, and I could keep my eye on him once in a while.”
“Did he have my rubber doll?” asked Flossie.
“I didn’t see any doll,” answered the engineer. “But he’s in there now,” he went on. “You can ask him yourself.”