“At your service, my dear young lady,” came the reply from the darkness.
“Won’t you—would you mind—couldn’t you compose a—a verse before you go?” she asked breathlessly. There was a moment’s silence. Then the Poet’s voice came back to them from a little distance:
“Thanks, all, for this pleasant occasion,
And pardon my leaving so soon.
That you’ll spend a delightful vacation
Is the wish of your friend, Billy Noon.”
[CHAPTER X]
ADVENTURES WITH A LAUNCH
The next morning they went down to Silver Cove in the canoe to bring back the launch. Harry didn’t accompany them, much as she wished to do so, because the canoe held only three safely and they didn’t want to take the rowboat. They promised to stop at the landing on the way back and pick her up.
The launch was awaiting them in the freight-shed and they spent a busy half hour getting it out of its crate and into the water. For the latter task they enlisted the services of two employees of the wharf. When she was finally afloat she proved to be a very pretty little boat. She was sixteen feet long and four feet five inches broad, open the entire length save for a little triangle of deck at the bow and a corresponding space at the stern. She was painted green below and black above the water-line, and buff inside. The engine, of two horse-power, was placed well toward the stern, and in front of it was a cross seat with cushions covered with something that wasn’t leather but that looked rather like it if you didn’t get too near. Other seats ran forward on each side to the bow and were similarly attired. There was a neat brass steering-wheel, brass flag-sockets, brass cleats and a round disk of brass let into the forward deck which puzzled them all until investigation proved it to be the inlet to the gasolene tank.
“That’s so,” muttered Dick, “we’ve got to have gasolene, haven’t we?”
“Well,” Chub answered, “you might get along with tomato catsup or witch hazel, but gasolene launches seem to take to gasolene better than to anything else.”