So the majority had its way, as it usually does, and the Slow Poke was slated for a fortnight’s trip up the river and back again.
After dinner every one went down to the landing and inspected the house-boat, Roy murmuring excuses for the untidiness of the rooms. Mrs. Emery, however, declared that everything looked very neat, and that she rather wished she were going, too. Whereupon Chub gallantly offered to sleep on deck.
“What a dear little room!” Harry exclaimed when her room on the boat was shown her. “It’s perfectly lovely!” Her father’s room adjoined it and he, too, was delighted. The three boys “bunked” together in the rear room.
Roy hurried in to summon Dick to his duties as engineer, as the ladies wanted to go for a sail. The Slow Poke meandered up the river for a couple of miles and the guests sat on the upper deck and said all sorts of nice things about her and her crew. Harry was allowed to take the wheel for a while, under Chub’s tutelage, and was highly pleased.
The boys remained at the school two days, during which time they went to all their old haunts, played a good deal of tennis, and had a thoroughly enjoyable time of it. They spent an afternoon on Harry’s Island, which lay in the river just above the school, and talked over the fun they had had the summer before while camping out there. The island had been a birthday present to Harry from her father, and she was very proud of it.
“When I get through college,” she declared, “I’m going to build a house here and live in it all my days. Won’t that be jolly?”
“Pshaw,” said Dick, “you’ll get married and maybe live a thousand miles from here.”
“I shan’t,” answered Harry, seriously. “I’ve decided not to be married, ever. I told Aunt Harriet so the other day and she said I was very sensible.”
They visited Harry’s menagerie in the barn and renewed acquaintances with Methuselah, the parrot, several Angora cats and kittens, squirrels, guinea-pigs, rabbits, white mice and pigeons. [Snip, Harry’s fox-terrier had long since welcomed them.] Methuselah looked not a whit different from what he did when they had last seen him, and, although it is doubtful if he remembered even Dick, he acted quite cordially and nipped Roy’s finger in quite an intimate manner.
“Do you think,” asked Harry, anxiously, “that Snip would be in the way on the boat?”