“At this rate,” sighed Harry to Chub, “we shall be home long before supper-time.”
“Well, for my part,” answered Chub, turning the spokes of the wheel idly back and forth, “I’m about ready to eat some one else’s cooking. But don’t whisper it to Dick.”
“This will be our last—I mean my last dinner on board,” said Harry, regretfully. “Don’t you think we might find a real pretty place to stop, Chub?”
“To be sure, we can; and we’ll make a farewell banquet of it and eat everything nice we’ve got! You take the wheel a minute, and I’ll give orders to my worthless crew.”
They made quite a ceremony of that dinner. Dick, imbued with the spirit of the occasion, made a jelly omelet as a pièce de résistance, and piled every good thing that the larder contained on the table up under the striped awning. They had stopped the headlong career of the Slow Poke where a murmuring grove of trees came down and leaned over the water as though to watch their green finery mirrored back to them from the calm surface. They had snubbed the boat’s bow close to shore, so that half the upper deck was in the cool shadow, and at that end they had placed the table. Harry and Snip had jumped ashore and brought back sprays of leaves for the adornment of the festal board and Roy had ruthlessly snipped a dozen big red blooms from the geraniums in the boxes. Dinner was late, but no one minded, not even the doctor, for Ferry Hill was less than fifteen miles away, and three hours more would bring them there.
[The doctor was called on for a speech]
[The doctor was called on for a speech] when the dessert was brought on, and responded eloquently, finally toasting his hosts in a brimming glass of “vin de Cold Spring.” Chub responded, “on behalf of himself and his crew, who, being a motley lot hailing from many countries, were unable to speak the English.” The crew groaned loudly at this, but later forgave the remark and responded generously with applause. Snip ate his repast from a dish at Harry’s side and had a little of everything, as was only proper when you consider the occasion. Harry decreed that no one was to hurry the least little bit, and no one did. And so it was two o’clock before the engine began its work once more, and almost five when the Slow Poke sidled up to the Ferry Hill landing, and Snip, with a bark of sheer delight, leaped the intervening two yards of water and capered around the float.