“Oh, yes, but this—this is a deep-sea boat,” Ed explained, “and you might run yourselves away to other shores.”
“And land on a desert island? What sport!” exclaimed Lottie, to whom motor boating was an entirely new experience. “I hope we make it Holland. I have always longed to see a real, live Holland boy. The kind who are all clothes and wooden shoes.”
“We might make one up for you,” suggested Belle. “I think Wallie would look too cute for anything in skirty trousers and polonaise shirts. Just let his locks grow a little—Look out there, Bess! That’s water around the boat. It only looks like an oil painting. It’s real—wet!”
Bess was climbing over the dock edge, and of course the boys could not allow her that much exercise without pretending that she was in danger of going overboard. After Belle unhooked the hem of her sister’s skirt from an iron bolt, thereby giving Bess a sudden drop to the deck of the Chelton, however, Bess declared she knew water when she saw it, and also the difference between a water color and an oil painting.
“What did you call her Chelton for?” asked Walter. “I thought you decided to take the name from the first remark the first stranger should make about her.”
“Yes, and what do you think that was?” laughed Belle.
“‘Push’!” promptly answered Freda. “An old fisherman came along as Jack was arranging the painter, and he just said ‘push’!”
“That would be a handy little name,” commented Walter.
“Next some boys, out clamming, saw her,” said Jack, “and they said ‘peach.’”
“Either of which would have done nicely,” declared Ed. “Peach would have been the very name—after the girls——”