“That means you didn’t look,” replied his father, descending the ladder and jumping into the launch. “There’ll be a maker’s plate on her somewhere, unless it’s been ripped off.” He went forward and peered amongst the instruments there, and presently gave a grunt of satisfaction. “Here it is. ‘Built by Wells-Stotesbury Company, Moorcett, Conn.’ Now, what’s her name, Tobe? Oh, they painted that out, did they? Run up to the paint closet and get that can of paint-remover and a handful of waste.”
A few minutes later the gray paint began to dissolve from a patch on the slanting stern and her name appeared letter by letter, faint, but legible. “Ollow M” read Toby. “That’s a queer name.”
“You wait a bit,” advised Mr. Tucker, and extended his operations with the evil-smelling concoction in the can. “There it is,” he said at last. “Follow Me. Now, all you’ve got to do is write to the builders and ask who she belongs to. Where was your gumption, Tobe?”
Toby shook his head sadly, but whether the sadness was caused by an appreciation of his lamentable lack of gumption or by something else didn’t appear. At the boys’ request Mr. Tucker indited a letter at the littered desk in one corner of the boat shed and they bore it to the postoffice. Toby watched it disappear through the letter slot with emotions of despair! He spent all the rest of the day, to Arnold’s disgust, in shining the brass on the Follow Me and cleaning her up, and Arnold, after toiling with him until noon, went off in something very like a huff and didn’t come back that day. Probably Toby missed him, but he didn’t seem unhappy. He rubbed and scrubbed until supper time, whistling a tune all the while, and when Phebe, sent to fetch him, exclaimed admiringly as she viewed the glistening brass and immaculate varnish, Toby was fully rewarded. After supper Phebe helped him stretch a tarpaulin over the Follow Me and sympathetically listened to Toby’s enraptured comments on her and agreed with them all.
“Perhaps,” she said, hopefully, as they made their way across the boat yard in the twilight, “some day you’ll have one just like her.”
But Toby sighed and shook his head. “Probably when that time came I wouldn’t want it so much,” he said.
“Oh, I meant real soon,” said Phebe cheerfully.
“If I had enough money to buy me a launch like that soon, I wouldn’t buy it,” replied her brother. “I’d rather go to boarding school.”
Mr. Tucker had assured them they couldn’t count on hearing from the launch builders until the second day after they had written, and so Arnold took up the task of forming the Spanish Head Baseball Club where he had left off and was able the next morning to inform Toby that the “Spaniards” were ready for the fray. But Toby hadn’t made any such progress and reported that he was still shy two players, even if he provided no substitutes. Arnold was severe with him.
“You haven’t been trying,” he charged. “You’ve been monkeying around that silly launch. You needn’t say you haven’t, for I know you have. He has, hasn’t he, Phebe? Besides, look at your hands all grimed with paint or something.”