here's
all those chickens drying to flinders in that oil-stove-oven, and that
horrid old man talking Mrs. Calvert into a headache. Least, he isn't
talking so much as she is. Thinks she must entertain him, I suppose.
The idea! Anybody going visiting to _breakfast_ without being asked!"

But by this time the good woman had talked her annoyance off, and
while she dished up the breakfast--a task she wouldn't leave to Chloe
on this state occasion--Jim hastily condensed the information he had
received and was glad that she promptly decided, as he had, that a
sojourn on the quiet, inland Run would best please Aunt Betty.

"It would certainly suit me," assented the matron.

"Oh! hang it all! What's the use? Hiding in a silly little creek when
there's the whole Chesapeake to cruise in!" cried the disgusted
Gerald, leaning upon the little table and hungrily eyeing the platter
of chicken.

"How can we dare, how could we if we dared, try the Bay? We haven't
any engine to use now," said Jim.

"Well, get one, then! If that girl can afford to run a house-boat and
ask folks to stay on it, she ought to provide something decent for
their entertainment. When _we_ owned the Water Lily we did things up
to the queen's taste. I'm not going to bury myself in any backwoods.
I'll quit first."

"Boy, are you always so cross before breakfast?" asked a girl's voice
over his shoulder, and he turned to see Dorothy smiling upon him.

"No. Except when I'm sent for cream and hear fool talk from a measly
old farmer in a blue smock," he answered, laughing rather foolishly.

"Was it the color of his smock made him measly? And what was that I
heard about quitting?"

"Oh! nothing. I was just fooling. But, I say, Dorothy, don't you let
any old woman coax you into a dead-and-alive hole in the woods. Mark
what I say. They'll be trying it, but the Water Lily's your boat now,
isn't it?"

"So I understood. But from the amount of advice I receive as to
managing it, I think, maybe, it isn't. Well, I've heard you--now
listen to me. 'The one who eats the most bread-and-butter can have the
most cake'--or chicken. They look terrible little, don't they, now
they're cooked? And I warn you, I never saw anybody look so hungry in
all my life--no, not even you three boys!--as that poor, unhappy
Colonel of T, in there with Aunt Betty. Yes, Mrs. Bruce, we're ready
for breakfast at last. But mind what I say--_all we youngsters like
oatmeal_! We _must_ like it this t