"I bet it's green," said Tom.
But it turned out to be a weak silvery gray and with this they painted the cabin, or rather half the cabin, for their paint gave out.
They sat until long after midnight in the little cabin after their first day's work, but were up and at it again bright and early in the morning, for Mr. Stanton's men were coming with the block and falls at high tide in the evening to haul the Good Turn back into her watery home.
Pee-wee spent a good part of the day throwing out superfluous junk and tidying up the little cabin, while Tom and Roy repaired the rubbing-rail where it had broken loose and attended to other slight repairs on the outside.
The dying sunlight was beginning to flicker on the river and the three were finishing their supper in the cabin when Tom, looking through the porthole, called, "Oh, here comes the truck and an automobile just in front of it!"
Sure enough, there on the road was the truck with its great coil of hempen rope and its big pulleys, accompanied by two men in overalls. Pee-wee could not repress his exuberance as the trio clambered up on the cabin roof and waved to the little cavalcade.
"In an hour more she'll be in the water," he shouted, "and we'll——"
"We'll anchor till daylight," concluded Roy.
In another moment a young girl, laden with bundles, had left the automobile and was picking her way across the marsh. It proved to be the owner of the fugitive bird.
"I've brought you all the things that belong to the boat," she said, "and I'm going to stay and see it launched. My father was coming too but he had a meeting or something or other. Isn't it perfectly glorious how you chopped up the stanchions——"