“And I’ll recite ‘The Launching of the Ship,’” said Toby, “and you’ll wave a couple of flags and——”
“And Mr. Murphy will scream ‘All hands!’” laughed Phebe. “It will be a perfectly wonderful affair, Arnold!”
“Well, it will. You wait and see.” Arnold jumped up. “Come on and we’ll go and tell Long Tim what her name is. Would you have it painted on in gold, Toby, or would you put brass letters on?”
“Brass letters. Gold-leaf comes off too easily. You two go ahead. I’m going back to the landing. It’s almost four.”
After the Urnove had returned from her last trip and was tied to the boat-yard pier again, and Arnold had slipped out of sight in the Frolic, Toby and Phebe walked across the yard and the road and perched themselves on the stone steps of the cottage. “I guess,” said Toby after a little silence, “it isn’t going to go.”
“I’m awfully sorry,” murmured Phebe. “But you won’t give up after just one day, will you?”
“N-no, I guess I’ll finish out the week. There’s just tomorrow and Saturday. If something doesn’t happen by then I’ll call it off. It’s funny, too, sis, for I’ll just bet you anything lots of folks went over to Johnstown today by road. Why couldn’t they let me take ’em over? It wouldn’t have cost any more. Not so much!”
“Maybe they don’t know about it yet,” said Phebe encouragingly. “It takes time to—to get things started, you know.”
“Some one ought to know about it by this time,” replied the boy disconsolately. “If we’d only had one passenger it wouldn’t have been so bad, but not to have had any——”
“Toby, I’m just as sure as anything that you’ll do better tomorrow!”