hurry him along?"

"Let's ask Miss Jenny Ann," suggested Lillian slyly. "She has done her
share of the work already, and Mr. Brown is sketching the old garden
near the farmhouse. Haven't you noticed that our chaperon has been
very much interested in art lately? Mr. Brown wishes to paint a
picture of our houseboat. He has a fancy for this neighborhood. He
thinks it is so picturesque. 'Straws show which way the wind blows,'
you know. Watch the candy for me. I'll go ask Miss Jenny Ann if she
will go out and round up our faithless boy."

Miss Jones was quite willing to go, and started out, leaving the girls
to their cleaning. Every now and then they were seized with a desire
to work, which caused them to fall upon the houseboat and clean it from
end to end. This morning the fever had been upon them from the time
they had risen, and by the time Miss Jenny Ann started upon her errand
it was in full swing.

Jack Bolling and Tom Curtis were to bring Madge home late in the
afternoon, and, as a surprise for Madge, the boys had been invited to
remain to tea. It was therefore quite necessary that their floating
home should be well swept and garnished.

"Where's Phil?" asked Lillian, stepping from the kitchen out onto the
deck, where Eleanor had gone after having seen her cake safely in the
oven.

There came a series of raps on the cabin roof. Phil leaned over among
the honeysuckle vines on the upper deck. "I am up here, maiden,
digging in our window boxes. Want me for anything?"

"No," returned Eleanor, as she vanished inside the kitchen again. "But
sing out if you see Miss Jenny Ann and the boy coming."

A little while later Phil saw the figure of a young man coming slowly
down the path toward the houseboat. She thought, of course, that it
was the boy from the farm. She did not turn around. She was too
deeply engrossed in pulling up the weeds that had mysteriously appeared
in their window boxes. When his footsteps sounded on the floor of the
lower deck she called out carelessly, "Miss Seldon and Miss Butler are
in the cabin waiting for you. Miss Jones is not here. I suppose she
gave you the message."

The youth, who had been moving cautiously toward the houseboat, was not
the boy for whom the girls were waiting. This one had black, curly
hair and wild dark eyes. He looked up and down the shore. There was
no one in sight.

Although there were several farmhouses beyond the embankment that
sloped