“Back to the old home,” murmured Chub, as he leaned over the railing of the upper deck and let his gaze travel over the scene before him. Beside the landing at the right was the boat-house; to the left, the little stretch of white beach; before him, the winding path leading upward through a thick grove of rustling trees. Afar up on the hill, the tower of School Hall showed above the tree-tops. Roy, on the float, took a final hitch in the bow line, straightened himself, and looked about.

“Things haven’t changed much, have they?” he asked.

“Can’t expect them to, in less than a year,” answered Chub.

“There’s Hammond over there,” muttered Roy, shading his eyes and looking across the glittering river.

“Well, that’s just where we left it,” laughed Chub. “And Harry’s Island is in the same place, too, strange as it may seem. And the river still flows to the south, and—”

“Oh, yes,” said Roy. “But I don’t think much of the welcome they’ve provided, do you?”

“I do not,” answered Chub, with emphasis. “I expected at least a brass band and a collation.”

“Bother the brass band,” said Dick, appearing from the engine-room wiping his oil-stained hands on a piece of waste. “But a collation has a cheerful sound.”

“I thought surely that Harry would be here,” said Roy, with a trace of disappointment. “I wonder if she’s back.” He looked up the path.

“Maybe she didn’t get that letter,” suggested Dick. “If she didn’t she wouldn’t know when to look for us. And here we have invited ourselves to luncheon!”

“Let me see,” inquired Chub, “we posted that letter at the hotel, didn’t we?”

“Of course,” answered Dick. “Roy wrote it that afternoon; don’t you remember?”

“I remember his writing it,” said Chub, “but I never saw it afterward. Did you mail it at the office, Roy?”

“Yes—er—I guess so. I put it in my pocket when we went to dinner.”

“Ten to one, you didn’t mail it!” exclaimed Dick.

“Suppose you look in your pocket,” Chub suggested. Roy walked into the forward cabin with a frown on his face. Chub and Dick grinned across at each other. In a moment Roy returned with the letter in his hand and looking very sheepish.

“It was in the pocket of my blue serge,” he announced. The others looked disgusted.

“You’re a nice one!” exclaimed Chub. “Here we are with nothing on board for luncheon and no one to invite us to the Cottage.”

“I’m awfully sorry,” muttered Roy. “I don’t know how I came to forget it.”

“Well, there’s bacon and potatoes, isn’t there?” he added with an attempt at cheerfulness.

“Bacon and potatoes!” growled Chub. “I’m sick of bacon and potatoes!”

“And I’m sick of cooking ’em!” added Dick. “I thought we were going to get a good luncheon at the Cottage.”

“Well, why not go up and call on the Doctor and Mrs. Emery?” asked Chub. “They’ll be certain to ask us to lunch.”

“It looks too cheeky,” said Roy.

“Think of your minding that!” murmured Chub. Then, “I know!” he exclaimed. “We’ll blow the whistle and maybe some one will come!”

“Good idea!” Dick cried. He darted into the wheel-house and in a moment the whistle was screeching loudly. “That ought to fetch some one,” said he.

Toot-toot-! Toot-toot-toot! said the whistle. Dick kept up the racket for a full minute, and then they awaited results. Several more minutes passed.

“What time is it?” asked Dick. Chub looked at his watch.

“Almost a quarter past one,” he replied. “And they have luncheon at one.”

Dick groaned.

“Listen!” exclaimed Roy. From up the hill came a faint shrill cry.

“It’s Harry!” Chub exclaimed. He scrambled down to the landing just as a white-clad figure came into sight up the path.

“Ship ahoy!” she called, gleefully, using her hands as a megaphone, and there was an answering shout of joy in chorus from the boat. The next moment they were all shaking hands on the landing, laughing and talking together in a babel of sound.

“I thought you weren’t coming!” cried Harry. “You promised to write and you never did it!”

Harriet Emery, or Harry, as she preferred to be called, was the daughter of Doctor Emery, the Principal of Ferry Hill School. She was sixteen years of age, or would be very shortly, and a charming girl. She had pronouncedly red hair of a very pretty shade, a pair of sparkling blue eyes, a somewhat pert, little, uptilted nose, and a complexion which, in spite of the coat of tan which was beginning to overspread it was very attractive.

“Well, you certainly have grown!” exclaimed Chub, backing off that he might get the full effect of the graceful figure in its white dress. “Skirts down and hair up,” he added with a shake of his head. “Harry, you must come to Class Day next year. Will you?”

“Do you really think I’ve grown?” she asked, eagerly.

“Grown!” echoed Roy. “You look a whole foot taller!”

“That’s because she wears her hair that way,” said Dick.

“Dick Somes, it is not!” Harry turned upon him indignantly.

“Dick Somes, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” mimicked Chub. “Don’t you mind him, Harry. He never did have any manners in spite of my careful training. We were beginning to think you weren’t here, Harry.”

“I didn’t know when you were coming, silly! Why didn’t you write? I’ve been awfully anxious.”

“Write? Oh, but we did write,” said Chub. “Didn’t you get Roy’s letter?”

“Of course I didn’t,” replied Harry, suspiciously, glancing around her at the preternaturally sober countenances. “I don’t believe you wrote.”

“How passing strange!” murmured Chub. “Roy, hand the lady her letter. She appears to doubt my word.”

Roy laughed, and fished the missive from his pocket.

“You didn’t send it!” Harry exclaimed. Chub shook his head.

“No, we feared it might alarm you. We thought it better to bring it along with us. You will see that we agreed to be here the twenty-first. It is now the twenty-first. And here we are, right on time. Punctuality is one of our principal virtues. Tell her some of the others, Dick.”

“The fact is,” owned Roy, “that I forgot to mail it, Harry. I’m awfully sorry, really.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter now that you’re here, does it?” asked Harry, beamingly. “And doesn’t the Jolly Roger look beautiful?”

“She is no longer the Jolly Roger,” corrected Chub. “We have changed the name to Slow Poke. After you’ve been on her awhile you’ll know why. But she does pretty well. I take very good care of her. Of course, if I had a capable, intelligent crew, I might do much better, but—”

“Chub, you’re just as silly as ever!” said Harry, severely. “I should think that going to college would make you more sensible.”

“It will take more than a year to affect him that way,” said Dick.

“Oh, I’m so glad to see you all!” exclaimed Harry, beaming from one to another of the trio. “But we must hurry back because luncheon is on the table and I told mama I’d bring you right up.”

The boys gazed at each other and smiled covertly. Chub shook his head regretfully.

“It’s very nice of you, Miss Emery, and we appreciate your thoughtfulness, but the fact is that Dick had just announced dinner when you appeared. So I think we had better decline your invitation.”

“Now that’s perfectly horrid!” cried Harry in disappointment. “Please come, Chub!”

Chub hesitated, frowning tensely. Dick and Roy grinned. At length—

“Very well, if you put it that way,” acceded Chub. “I never could refuse a lady. We will go, even against our inclinations. Dick, clear the viands from the board.”

Dick and Roy burst into laughter, while Harry looked perplexedly from them to Chub’s grave countenance.

“There aren’t any viands,” blurted Dick. “We haven’t anything but bacon and potatoes.”

“Oh!” said Harry. “Chub Eaton, you’re a dreadful fibber! It would just serve you right if I—if I recalled my invitation.”

“Jehoshaphat!” shrieked Chub, leaping up the path. “I won’t give you a chance! I’ll tell your mother you’ll be right up.” They heard him scrambling up through the grove ahead of them. But when they reached the gate in the hedge which divided the school grounds from the woods Chub was awaiting them. “We will all go in together,” he announced with dignity. “It will look much better.”

So they went across to the doctor’s residence, mounted the steps, and found themselves in the little parlor shaking hands with Doctor and Mrs. Emery and the latter’s sister, who was to remain at the Cottage during the absence of Harry and her father.

Chub and Roy and Dick had been quite intimate with the doctor and his wife during their school years, and the latter were unmistakably glad to see them again. Luncheon was ready and they all trooped into the dining-room. Of course, there was much to tell and the doctor asked a good many questions of Chub and Roy regarding their college experience. Afterward the conversation worked around to the cruise, and Chub recounted their adventures up to date, winning more than one hearty laugh from his audience. Mrs. Emery wanted them to bring their luggage ashore and occupy beds in one of the dormitories during their stay at Ferry Hill, but they declined the invitation, electing to stand by their ship. It was agreed that the Slow Poke was to remain at Ferry Hill two days. Then the Doctor and Harry were to go aboard, and the cruise was to continue up the river. There was only one dissenting voice, and that was Dick’s.

“Seems to me,” he said, “we ought to turn around and go down stream a while. The Slow Poke’s been tussling with the current ever since we started. We ought to give her a rest and let her float with the tide for a while.”

“Oh, shucks,” Chub objected, “put some more oil on the engine, Dickums. What’s the good of going over the same ground—I mean the same water—twice? Let’s discover new worlds.”

So the majority had its way, as it usually does, and the Slow Poke was slated for a fortnight’s trip up the river and back again.

After dinner every one went down to the landing and inspected the house-boat, Roy murmuring excuses for the untidiness of the rooms. Mrs. Emery, however, declared that everything looked very neat, and that she rather wished she were going, too. Whereupon Chub gallantly offered to sleep on deck.

“What a dear little room!” Harry exclaimed when her room on the boat was shown her. “It’s perfectly lovely!” Her father’s room adjoined it and he, too, was delighted. The three boys “bunked” together in the rear room.

Roy hurried in to summon Dick to his duties as engineer, as the ladies wanted to go for a sail. The Slow Poke meandered up the river for a couple of miles and the guests sat on the upper deck and said all sorts of nice things about her and her crew. Harry was allowed to take the wheel for a while, under Chub’s tutelage, and was highly pleased.

The boys remained at the school two days, during which time they went to all their old haunts, played a good deal of tennis, and had a thoroughly enjoyable time of it. They spent an afternoon on Harry’s Island, which lay in the river just above the school, and talked over the fun they had had the summer before while camping out there. The island had been a birthday present to Harry from her father, and she was very proud of it.

“When I get through college,” she declared, “I’m going to build a house here and live in it all my days. Won’t that be jolly?”

“Pshaw,” said Dick, “you’ll get married and maybe live a thousand miles from here.”

“I shan’t,” answered Harry, seriously. “I’ve decided not to be married, ever. I told Aunt Harriet so the other day and she said I was very sensible.”

They visited Harry’s menagerie in the barn and renewed acquaintances with Methuselah, the parrot, several Angora cats and kittens, squirrels, guinea-pigs, rabbits, white mice and pigeons. [Snip, Harry’s fox-terrier had long since welcomed them.] Methuselah looked not a whit different from what he did when they had last seen him, and, although it is doubtful if he remembered even Dick, he acted quite cordially and nipped Roy’s finger in quite an intimate manner.

“Do you think,” asked Harry, anxiously, “that Snip would be in the way on the boat?”

“Of course not,” answered Chub. “We’re going to take him along, aren’t we, Snip?” And Snip wagged his stump of a tail in enthusiastic affirmation.

They were to leave in the morning, and Harry spent most of that afternoon in the kitchen making pies and doughnuts, Mrs. Emery assisting. Chub, being missed from the tennis court, was discovered sitting on the kitchen doorsteps sampling the baking.

“How many has he had, Mrs. Emery?” Roy demanded.

“Only one or two, haven’t I, Mrs. Emery?” cried Chub.

“Well, not very many,” responded that lady smilingly.

“Chub Eaton, you’ve had four to my certain knowledge!” exclaimed Harry, who, with a blue-checked apron tied under her chin and very flushed cheeks, was superintending the frying of a new batch of doughnuts.

“Then you’ve had quite enough,” said Roy firmly. “And it’s back to tennis court for you, Chub.”

However, they postponed the carrying out of the verdict long enough to do some sampling themselves. “They’re perfect,” was Dick’s verdict, “but I miss the almond flavor, Harry.” Whereupon Harry grew very much redder and it was discovered that her mother had never learned of her experiment in adding almond extract to the doughnut recipe the summer before. So Chub told about it and Harry declared that he was too mean for words and shouldn’t have another bite of anything.

The next morning after breakfast the luggage was taken aboard, the doctor’s being largely composed of books and papers, and at ten o’clock all hands were at the landing, Snip being so excited that he was obliged to bark every instant. Doctor Emery pretended that the voyage was to last for months at least and was very solicitous as to the state of the larder. Mrs. Emery, her sister, and John, the gardener and general factotum, were on hand to witness the departure and to wave good-by as the Slow Poke nosed her way free of the landing and started off on the second stage of her voyage.

“Good-by, mama!” called Harry from the upper deck, waving a wisp of a handkerchief frantically.

“Good-by!” called Mrs. Emery. “Don’t fall overboard!”

“I won’t,” promised Harry, earnestly.

And then caps and handkerchiefs waved busily until the Slow Poke passed around the end of Harry’s Island and the landing disappeared from view.

“And now,” cried Harry, ecstatically, “we’re really at sea!”