“There’s three days’ more work on her,” he grumbled, “for she’ll have to have two coats all over her.”
“Tell you what we might do, though,” said Chub. “We might put another coat on this side and let her go. I think it would be kind of original and sporty to have one side black and the other side white.”
Dick said he was an idiot, and Roy indorsed the sentiment heartily, and good nature was not restored until they had donned their bathing-suits and were splashing around in the water off Inner Beach.
After dinner Dick armed himself with pot and brush and went back to work, and after looking on for awhile Roy and Chub were forced to join him.
“You fellows needn’t help,” Dick assured them. But the assurance was only half-hearted and Chub grunted irritably.
“Huh,” he said, “you know blamed well we can’t sit there in the shade and see you working out here all alone. If I get sunstruck, like Billy Warren in the boat-race, you’ll be sorry, I guess.”
Dick had discovered that the first coat of white had dried sufficiently to allow of a second and so before supper-time they had finished the port side of the hull. And very nice it looked, too; until you got a glimpse of the other side!
“It’s like having two boats,” said Chub cheerfully, wiping the paint from his hands to his trousers. “If it was mine I’d put one name on one side and another name on the other. For instance, Dick, you could call the white boat Pup and the black boat Kit.”
“They might fight,” said Harry, who had spent the afternoon comfortably on shore. “Just supposing the Pup began chasing the Kit, Dick!”
“It would be a stern chase,” said Chub.