“Then there’s only Little Jim, Dragonfly and Little Tom Till left,” I said, and Poetry said, “Maybe not a one of them’ll be willing to be your Man Friday.”
We didn’t have time to talk about it any further, ’cause right that second Dragonfly came moseying out toward us from his tent, his spindling legs swinging awkwardly and his crooked nose and dragonfly-like eyes making him look just like a ridiculous Friday afternoon, I thought.
“He’s the man I want,” I said. “We three have had lots of exciting adventures together, and he’ll be perfect.”
“But he can’t keep quiet when there’s a mystery. He always sneezes just when we don’t want him to.”
Right that second, Dragonfly reached the pier and let the bottoms of his bare feet go ker-plop, ker-plop, ker-plop on the smooth boards, getting closer with every “ker-plop.”
When he spied Poetry and me in the boat at the end, he stopped like he had been shot at, and looked down at us and said with an accusing voice, “You guys going on a boat ride? I’m going along!”
I started to say, “Sure, we want you,” thinking how when we got over to the island, we could make a slave out of him as easy as pie.
But Poetry beat me to it by saying, “There’s only one more of the gang going with us, and it might not be you.”
Dragonfly plopped himself down on the edge of the dock, swung one foot out to the gunwale of the boat, caught it with his toes, pulled it toward him, swished himself in and sat down in the seat behind Poetry. “If anybody goes, I go, or I’ll scream and tell the rest of the gang, and nobody’ll get to go.”
I looked at Poetry and he looked at me and our eyes said to each other, “Now what?”