The boys--for they were still the boys, even if they had pa.s.sed one and twenty--stretched themselves along the wharf in picturesque att.i.tudes.

"I would sing!" announced Gerald. "Prose will not express my feelings at this juncture.

"My fertile brain is simmering, My fancy's fire is glimmering; I'd fain betake Me to the lake, When bright the moonlight's shimmering.

"Your turn, Ferguson. Go on; the song upraise!"

"Let me see!" said Phil. "Well--on the whole--

"I can't agree with himmering; _My_ fancy's fire is dimmering; If you would know The thing I'd doe, Methinks I'll go a swimmering."

"Oh! no, Phil," said Gertrude. "Not the very first night the girls are here; it will take them a day or two to get used to camp ways, Margaret at least; and we want to do something all together, something that Colonel Ferrers will like, too. I think--"

"Sing it! sing it!" cried Gerald. "The song upraise, Tintinnabula! no escape! 'Trimmering' is still left you."

"Is there only one vowel?" demanded Bell, laughing. "I refuse to be fettered. Wait a second!--now I have it.

"Forbear, forbear your clamoring, And cease this hasty hammering; I think, with Jerry, 'Twere wise and merry To row by moonlight glamouring.

Your turn, Toots!"

"I cannot!" said Gertrude. "You know I cannot, Bell. Besides, there aren't any more rhymes."

"Oh!" cried Gerald, "you know what you are telling, and you know what happens to people who tell them. Perpend, Tootsina!

"You yodel, yodel yammering, You stutter, stutter stammering; And when you cry, 'I will not try!'

We know you're only shammering."

"Gracious!" said Gertrude. "Don't you suppose I would make rhymes if I could? It's really a dreadful thing to be the only prose member of a large family. But Jack comforts me; you can't make them either, can you, Jack?"

"Not to save my life!" said Jack. "Never could see how they do it."

"But you can set them to music!" said Gertrude. "That is the delightful thing about you."

"And you can ill.u.s.trate them! That is one of the many delightful things about you!" 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 Wa.s.sER ZU SINGEN

"HARRY MONMOUTH!" said Colonel Ferrers. "This is pleasant. Merryweather, you are a lucky dog!" As he spoke, he looked around him, and repeated, "A lucky dog, sir!"

The horn had just blown for supper, three long blasts, and already the campers were in their places at the long table, with its shining white cover. Mr. and Mrs. Merryweather, their six children, Bell, Gertrude, and Kitty, Gerald, Philip, and w.i.l.l.y, the two Montforts, with the Colonel and his nephew, made a party of twelve, and filled the table comfortably, though there was still room for more. The room was a long one, with a vast open fireplace stretching half across one side. At one end were rows of book-shelves, filled to overflowing; at the other, the walls were adorned with models for boats, sketches in water-color and pen and ink, birds' nests, curious fungi, and all manner of odds and ends. It was certainly a cheerful room, and so Miles Merryweather thought, as his eyes followed the Colonel's.

"We like it!" he said, simply. "It suits us, the place and the life.

It's good for young and old both, to get away from hurry and bustle, and live for a time the natural life."

"Nature, sir!" said the Colonel. "Nature! that's it; nothing like it!