Chapter VII: Making Plans

Left to themselves on the _Bluebird_, Ruth, Agnes, Dot and Tess went over every part of it again, from the engine room to the complete kitchen and living apartments.

"Neale will just love fussing around that motor," said Agnes.

"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 canal 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 pass."

"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 canal 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 canal 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 canal, 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 assured 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 lassies. A canal 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 circumstances.

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

It was part of her self-imposed duties to play Lady Bountiful to some of the poorer persons who rented Uncle Peter Stower's tenements.

"Well, as long as you don't go to buying 'dangly jet eawin's' for Olga Pederman it will be all right," said Agnes, and they laughed at this remembrance of the girl who, when ill with diphtheria, had asked for these ornaments when Ruth called to see what she most wanted.

Eventually all the many details were arranged and taken care of. A mechanic had gone over the motor of the _Bluebird_ and pronounced it in perfect running order, a fact which Neale verified for himself. He had made all his plans for going on the trip, and between that and eagerly waiting for any news of his missing father, his days were busy ones.

Mr. Howbridge had closely questioned Hank Dayton and had learned all that rover could tell, which was not much. But it seemed certain that Mr. O'Neil had started from Alaska for the States.

That he had not, even on his arrival, written to Neale, was probably due to the fact that the man did not know where his son was. His Uncle Bill Sorber, of course, knew Neale's address, but the trouble was that the circus, which was not a very large affair, traveled about so, on no well-kept scheduled route, that Mr. Sorber was difficult to find. Letters had been addressed to him at several places where it was thought his show might be, but, so far, no answer had been received. He was asked to send a message to Mr. Howbridge as soon as any word came from Mr. O'Neil.

To Hank Dayton was left the task of picking out some mules to tow the houseboat through the stretch of canal. About a week, or perhaps longer, would be consumed on this trip, as there was no hurry.

Where the voyage is kept up for any length of time, two sets of mules or horses are used in towing canal boats. When one team is wearied it is put in the stable, which is on board the canal boat, and the other team is led out over a bridge, or gangplank, specially made for the purpose, on to the towpath.

But on the _Bluebird_ there were no provisions for the animals, so it was planned to buy only one team of mules, drive the animals at a leisurely pace through the day and let them rest at night either in the open, along the canal towpath, or in some of the canal barns that would be come upon on the trip. At the end of the trip the animals would be sold. Mr. Howbridge had decided that this was the best plan to follow, though there was a towing company operating on the canal for such boat owners as did not possess their own animals.

As Mr. Howbridge had shrewdly guessed, the rough clothes of Hank Dayton held a fairly good man. He had been in poor luck, but he was not dissipated, and even Mrs. MacCall approved of him when he had been shaved, a shave being something he had lacked when Neale first saw him. Then, indeed, he had looked like a veritable tramp.

Gradually all that was to be done was accomplished, and the day came when Ruth and Agnes could say:

"To-morrow we start on our wonderful trip. Oh, I'm so happy!"

"What about your Civic Betterment Club?" asked Agnes of her sister.

"That will have to keep until I come back. Really no one wants to undertake any municipal reforms in the summer."

"Oh, my! The political airs we put on!" laughed Agnes. "Well, I'm glad you are going to have a good time. You need it."

"Yes, I think the change will be good for all of us," murmured Ruth. "Tess and Dot seem delighted, and--"

She stopped suddenly, for from the floor above came a cry of alarm followed by one of distress.

"What's that?" gasped Ruth.

"Dot or Tess, I should say," was the opinion of Agnes. "They must have started in to get some of their change already. Oh, gee!"

"Agnes!" Ruth took time to protest, for she very much objected to Agnes' slang.

A moment later Dot came bursting into the room, crying:

"Oh, she's in! She's in! And it isn't holding her up at all! Come on, quick. Both of you! Tess is in!"