ou!" said Jack, with a low bow.

"'They built it up for forty miles,
With mutual bows and pleasing smiles!'"

quoted Gerald. "A truce to this badinage! Compliment, unless paid to
myself, wearies me. We go, then, in canoes?"

"In canoes!" replied the others in chorus.

"'Tis well! Any special stunts in the way of arrangement?"

"Oh!" said Jack, "in plain prose--Bell, will you come with me? It's our
turn to get supper, isn't it? and I have an idea--just a little
one--which we can talk over while we are getting it."

"Oh, guard it, guard it tenderly,
Thy one idea--thy first!"

sang Gerald.

"And we, the while, console ourselves;
'Twill be the last, at worst!

Nay! nay!" he went on, as Jack seized him by the shoulders, and made a
motion toward the water.

"Duck not the bard, the tuneful bard,
Who all thy soul reveals;
To hear the truth, I own, is hard,
Yet dry thy tearful squeals!"

"False construction!" said Bell. "You cannot dry squeals."

"They were tearful ones!" Gerald protested. "It was the tears I would
have dried. Tears, idle tears, I know not whence they come; tears from
the depth of some despairing fiddler."

"Suppose you dry _up_!" said Jack, dipping Gerald's head lightly in the
water.

"No ducking between swims!" proclaimed Phil. "Law of the Medes and
Persians!"

"Besides, it is time to be making the fire!" said Bell, rising. "Leave
him to his conscience, Jack, and come along!"

"Yes, leave me to me conscience!" said Gerald.

"'Twill cradle me with songs of Araby;
Arrah be aisy! hear it sing to me!"

"Jerry, what _has_ got into you?" asked Gertrude, a few minutes later,
when Phil had followed the others to the house, leaving the two Reds, as
their mother called them, together. "Has the rhyming spider bitten you?
you are really wild!"

"Nice little sister!" said Gerald, rolling over, and resting his head
on Gertrude's knee. "Nice little red-haired, cream-colored, comfortable
sister! If I were as good-looking as you, Toots, who knows? As it
is--but still I am happy, my child, happy! I say! Toots!"

"Yes, Jerry!"

"What do you think of her?"

"Oh, Jerry, she is a darling!"

"_Dixisti!_" cried Gerald. "Thou hast spoken."

CHAPTER III.

AUF DAS WASSER ZU SINGEN

"HARRY MONMOUTH!" said Colonel Ferrers. "This is pleasant. Merryweather,
you are a lucky dog!" As h