d wonderingly listened to
this display of talent. "Ah-ha! I see Nellie just bursting with
one."

"Yes. I have a good one," admitted the doctor's daughter. "Hear it:

"'A right-handed writer named Wright
In writing "write" always wrote "rite."
Where he meant to write "write,"
If he'd written "write" right,
Wright would not have wrought rot writing "rite.'"

Now! let's hear you say _that_ fast?"

This certainly was a teaser and the boys admitted it. Finally somebody
shouted for Mother Wit. "Come on, Laura! where are you?" demanded
Bobby. "Are you going to let us mere 'amachoors' beat you? Give us a
limerick."

Mother Wit was expected to keep up with the other wits, that was sure.
So she obliged with:

"'A smart young fisher named Fischer,
Fished for fish from the edge of a fissure.
A fish, with a grin,
Pulled the fisherman in.
Now they're fishing the fissure for Fischer.'

"And now, boys, while we have been entertaining you," concluded Laura,
"you have gotten behind the _Duchess_ again."

"That's right, Lance," said Chet. "Give her some more power."

"Electricity is a wonderful thing," said Jess, seriously. "Just think
how fast it travels."

"How fast?" demanded Bobby.

"Something like 250,000 miles a second, I read somewhere."

"And so," remarked Bobby, grinning, "if it hits anybody, it tells the
judge it was going about ten miles an hour."

They were out for a good time and could laugh at almost anything that
was said, or was done. Freed from what Bobby called "the scholastic
yoke," the whole world seemed a big joke to them.

"I know we're going to have the finest kind of a time at Acorn
Island!" the cut-up exclaimed.

"Well! I hope there's nothing much to do there to-night, save to eat
supper," Jess said, yawning. "So much ozone is already making me
sleepy."

"Father Tom promised to have a man there to meet us, who would even
have the fire going and the teakettle boiling," said Bobby. "You see,
he's been up here hunting and fishing, and these guides all know him.
He can get what he wants from them."

The boats chugged on up the river and finally, as the evening began to
draw in, they sighted the broadening sheet of water which they knew to
be Lake Dunkirk. The lake was longer, but much narrower, than Lake
Luna, and it was surrounded by an unbroken line of forest