"You speak as if we had already decided to make the trip," remarked Ruth, with a bright glance at her sister.

"Why, yes, haven't you?" Agnes countered. "I thought you and Mr.

Howbridge had fixed it up between you when you were chatting up on the front seat of the auto."

"He never said a word to me about it," declared Ruth.

"He must have said something," insisted her sister.

"Oh, of course we talked, but not about _this_," and Ruth swept her hands about to indicate the _Bluebird_. "I was as much surprised as you to have him ask us if we would take her up to the lake."

"Well, it will be delightful, don't you think?"

"Yes, I think it will. But of course it depends on Mrs. MacCall."

"I don't see why!" exclaimed Agnes quickly and reproachfully.

"Of course you do. She'll have to go along to act as chaperone and all that. We may have to tie up at night in lonely places along the ca.n.a.l or river and--"

"We'll have Neale and Mr. Howbridge! And how about asking Luke Shepard and his sister Cecile?" went on Agnes.

Ruth flushed a little.

"I don't believe Cecile and Luke can go," she replied slowly. "Cecile has got to go home to take care of her Aunt Lorena, who is sick, and Luke wrote me that he had a position offered to him as a clerk in a summer hotel down on the coast, and it is to pay so well that he would not dream of letting the opportunity pa.s.s."

"Oh, that's too bad, Ruth. You won't see much of him."

"I am not sure I'll see anything of him." And Ruth's face clouded a little.

"Well, anyway, as I said before, we'll have Neale and Mr. Howbridge,"

continued Agnes.

"Neale. But Mr. Howbridge is not sure he can go--at least all the way.

However, we'll ask Mrs. MacCall."

"I think she'll be just crazy to go!" declared Agnes. "Come on, let's go right away and find out."

"But we must wait for Mr. Howbridge to come back. He told us to."

"Well, then we'll say we're already living on board," said Agnes. "Oh, won't it be fun to eat on a houseboat!" and she danced off to the dining room, took her seat at the table, and exclaimed: "I'll have a steak, rare, with French fried potatoes, plenty of gravy and a cup of tea and don't forget the pie _a la mode_."

Tess and Dot laughed and Ruth smiled. They then went all over the boat again, with the result that they grew more and more enthusiastic about the trip. And when Mr. Howbridge and Neale came back in the automobile a little later, beaming faces met them.

"Well, what about it, Minerva?" Mr. Howbridge asked Ruth. "Are you going to act as caretakers for the boat to help me settle the estate?"

"Since you put it that way, as a favor, I can not refuse," she answered, giving him a swift smile. "But, as I told the girls, it will depend on Mrs. MacCall."

"You leave her to me," laughed the lawyer. "I'll recite one of Bobby Burns' poems, and if that doesn't win her over nothing will. Neale, do you think you can manage that motor?"

"I'm sure of it," said the boy. "It isn't the same kind I had to run before, but I can get the hang of it all right."

"Is there any news about your father?" asked Ruth, glancing from her guardian to the boy.

"Nothing very definite," answered the lawyer. "We found Hank Dayton, and in spite of his rough and ragged clothes I discovered him to be a reliable fellow. He told us all he knew about the rumor of Mr. O'Neil having returned from the Klondike, and I am going to start an inquiry, with newspaper advertising and all that. And I may as well tell you that I have engaged this same Hank Dayton to drive the mules that will draw the _Bluebird_ on the ca.n.a.l part of the trip."

"Oh!" exclaimed Agnes. "I thought Neale said this man was a tramp!"

"He is, in appearance," said Mr. Howbridge, with a smile. "A person can not wear an evening suit and drive ca.n.a.l mules. But Hank seems to be a sterling chap at the bottom, and with Neale and Mrs. MacCall to keep him straight, you will have no trouble.

"It is really necessary," he went on, "to have some man who understands the ca.n.a.l, the mules, and the locks to look after the boat, and I think this Dayton will answer. He has just finished a trip, and so Neale and I hired him. It will be well for Neale to keep in touch with him, too, for through Hank we may get more news of Mr. O'Neil. And now, if you have sufficiently looked over the _Bluebird_, we may as well go back."

"It would be a good while before I could see enough of her!" exclaimed Agnes. "I'm just in love with the craft, and I know we shall have a delightful summer on her. Only the trip will be over too soon, I'm afraid."

"There is no necessity for haste," the lawyer a.s.sured her. "The purchaser of the boat does not want her until fall, and you may linger as long as you like on the trip."

"Good!" exclaimed Agnes.

A family council was held the next day at which Mr. Howbridge laid all the facts before Mrs. MacCall. At first the Scotch housekeeper would not listen to any proposal for the trip on the water. But when Ruth and Agnes had spoken of the delights of the boat, and when the housekeeper had personally inspected the _Bluebird_, she changed her mind.

"Though I never thought, in my old age, I'd come to bein' a houseboat keeper," she chuckled. "But 'tis all in the day's work. I'll gang with ye ma la.s.sies. A ca.n.a.l boat is certainly more staid than an ice-boat, and I went alang with ye on that."

"Hurray!" cried Agnes, unable to restrain her joy. "All aboard for Lake Macopic!"

The door opened and Aunt Sarah Maltby came in.

"I thought I heard some one calling," she said anxiously.

"It was Agnes," explained Ruth. "She's so excited about the trip."

"Fish? What fish? It isn't Friday, is it?" asked the old lady, who was getting rather deaf.

"No, Auntie dear, I didn't say _fish_--I said _trip_." And Ruth spoke more loudly. "We are going to make a trip on a houseboat for our summer vacation. Would you like to come along?"

Aunt Sarah Maltby shook her head, as Tess pulled out a chair for her.

"I'm getting too old, my dear, to go traipsing off over the country in one of those flying machines."

"It's a houseboat--not a flying machine," Agnes explained.

"Well, it's about the same, I reckon," returned the old lady. "No, I'll stay at home and look after things at the Corner House. It'll need somebody."

"Yes, there's no doubt of that," Ruth said.

So it was arranged. Aunt Sarah Maltby would stay at home with Linda and Uncle Rufus, while Mrs. MacCall accompanied the Corner House girls on the houseboat.

There was much to be done before the trip could be undertaken, and many business details to arrange, for, as inheritors of the Stower estate, Ruth and her sisters received rents from a number of tenants, some of them in not very good circ.u.mstances.

"And we must see that they will want nothing while we are gone," Ruth had said.