“My, but you chaps have elegant quarters down here,” exclaimed Tom. “We envy you your summer aboard here, don’t we, Bob?”
Henry Burns and Harvey, somewhat taken aback, made no reply, and looked embarrassed.
“Why, what’s up?” asked Tom, observing something was wrong. “No more trouble, I hope.”
Harvey explained the situation.
“That need not be so bad,” said Tom. “It doesn’t cost but little to live here. We spend scarcely anything, do we, Bob? We can lend you something to help you through. You don’t want to think of giving up the summer.”
“I dare say I could stick it out all right,” said Harvey, “if I was just camping once more. That doesn’t cost much. It is this boat that bothers me. We can’t run it for nothing.”
“Well, then,” exclaimed Henry Burns, vigorously, with more demonstrativeness than was usual with him, “I’ll tell you what we will do. We’ll make the boat work. We will make it pay its own way, and pay us something besides. We’ll fit out and go down among the islands fishing, and take our fish over to Stoneland and sell them, the same as the fishermen do. There won’t be a fortune in it, with a boat no bigger than this, but it will support us, and more too, after paying all expenses.”
“Henry,” cried Harvey, gratefully, “you’re a brick! I thought of that once, and I’d have proposed it if this had been the old Surprise; but I didn’t know as you would be willing to do it with this boat. It dirties a craft up so.”
“That doesn’t hurt a boat any,” said Henry Burns. “The fishermen down around Wilton’s Harbour take out sailing parties all summer, and their boats are always handsome and clean, and they don’t smell fishy. And the men always use them for fishing in the fall and spring, when the fishing is at its best. It simply means that we have got to take out all the nice fittings from the cabin, stow them away somewhere on shore, fit out with some tackle, and go ahead. At the end of the summer we will overhaul the Viking from deck to keelson, take out every piece of ballast in her, clean it and dry it and put it back, and paint the yacht over after we wash everything inside and out. She will be just as fine as she was before.”
“That’s great!” exclaimed Tom Harris. “You can do it all right, too. I wish we had a boat. We’d go along with you, wouldn’t we, Bob?”