"policeman."

"I won't be here when you git back," was the imp's cheerful response.

Madge and Phil paid no further heed to him. They went on toward the
town. A few yards farther on they heard the patter of bare feet.
"Can't you wait a minute?" a voice pleaded. "I was only teasing you.
If you promise you won't give me away, I'll tell you what became of
your old boat. My pa took it."

"Your pa?" cried Madge in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"When I told Pa I'd seen a new-fangled kind of a boat hitched to our
post, where we most generally ties up our own boat, he said you hadn't
no right to be there. So he just hitched up our mule and he come down
here and untied your boat and dragged it up shore. I run after him
until I got too tired. Then I come back here to tell you," ended the
boy.

"Where is your father?" Phil asked quietly. Madge's eyes were flashing
dangerously, her temper was rising.

"He's cutting hay," the boy returned. "I'll show you the field and
then I'll run."

Lillian and Eleanor had now joined the two girls to find out what was
delaying them. Miss Jones still waited, disconsolate, under the willow
tree. The four girls started out behind the one small boy, who
answered to the name of Bill Jenkins, Jr. It was evident that Bill
Jenkins, Sr., was the name of the boat-thief.

"What shall we say and do when we find the man?" asked Eleanor
anxiously. "I suppose we had no right to tie our boat up at his
landing place without asking permission."

Madge shook her head angrily. "Right or no right, I shall certainly
tell him my opinion of him," she said tensely.

"You must not make the man angry, Madge," argued gentle Eleanor, who
knew Madge's fiery, temper and stood in awe of it. "Perhaps, when he
sees we are girls, he will be sorry he took our boat away and will
bring it back for us."

"Let us go and see him at once," was Madge's sole response.

After all, it was Eleanor's gentleness that won the day! She told the
farmer, whom they found in the hay field, the whole story of the
houseboat, and how they hoped to spend their holiday aboard it.

"I declare, I'm real sorry I moved your houseboat," he apologized. "If
I'd 'a' known the pretty toy boat belonged to a parcel of young girls
like you, I'd never have laid hands on it. You kin stay along my shore
all summer if you like. But no one asked my permission to tie the boat
to my post. And soon as I seen it, I just thought the boat be