“I hope you fall in,” said the other vindictively. Toby laughed.
“I wouldn’t be much wetter if I did! All right now. Thanks!” He made a flying leap over the four feet of water between launch and float and landed safely. Simultaneously Arnold twirled the wheel and the Frolic pointed her nose down the harbor and chugged indignantly away. Not, however, until Toby had sent a gentle reminder floating after her.
“Frolic, ahoy!” he shouted.
Arnold turned an inquiring head.
“Don’t forget that ninety-nine cents! And remember I’m still whistling!”
There was no reply, and Toby, seating himself on the box, chuckled wickedly and resumed his onerous task.
Toby’s father wasn’t nearly as amused as Toby had expected him to be when he was told the incident of the last two-dollar bill at dinner that day. Mr. Tucker was a tall, stooped man of forty-odd years, with faded blue eyes in a weather-tanned face. The Tuckers had been boat builders for three generations, and Mr. Aaron Tucker’s skin seemed to have borrowed the hue from the mahogany that for so many years past had been sawed and shaped and planed and sandpapered in the big shed across the harbor road. In the old days Tucker’s Boat Yard had turned out good-sized fishing and pleasure craft, but business had fallen away in the last dozen years, and now small launches and sloops and rowboats constituted the output. And, at that, business was far from brisk. Perhaps Mr. Tucker had the fact in mind when he inquired dryly who was to pay for that other four and a half gallons of gasoline.
“I guess I’ll have to,” said Toby, ruefully.