Flossie was now taking off her shoes and stockings, which Freddie had done before he got on the raft; and it was a good thing, too, for the water splashed up over it as far as his ankles, and his shoes would surely have been wet had he kept them on.
“Whoa, there! Stop!” cried Flossie, as she came down to the edge of the pond, after having placed her doll, in its new blue dress, safely in the shade under a big burdock plant. “Whoa, there, steamboat! Whoa!”
“You mustn’t say ‘whoa’ to a boat!” objected Freddie, as he pushed the raft close to the bank, so his sister could get on. “You only say ‘whoa’ to a horse or a pony.”
“Can’t you say it to a goat?” demanded Flossie.
“Yes, maybe you could say it to a goat,” Freddie agreed, after thinking about it for a little while. “But you can’t say it to a boat.”
“Well, I wanted you to stop, so you wouldn’t bump into the shore,” said the little girl. “That’s why I said ‘whoa.’”
“But you mustn’t say it to a boat, and this raft is the same as a boat,” insisted Freddie.
“What must I say, then, when I want it to stop?”
Freddie thought about this for a moment or two while he paddled his bare foot in the water. Then he said:
“Well, you could say ‘Halt!’ maybe.”