, if you'll be so kind. Aunt Betty
can't be bothered and I don't know enough. Here's a key to the
'lockers,' I guess they call the pantries; and now I _must_ make that
old man give the word to start! Why, Aunt Betty thought we'd get as
far as Annapolis by bed-time. She wants to cruise first on the Severn
river. And we haven't moved an inch yet!"

"Well, I'll go talk with Chloe about dinner. She'll know best what'll
suit your aunt."

Dorothy was glad to see her old friend's face brighten with a sense
of her own importance, as "stewardess" for so big a company of
"shipmates," and slipping her arm about the lady's waist went with her
to the "galley," or tiny cook-room on the tender. There she left her,
with strict injunctions to Chloe not to let her "new mistress"
overtire herself.

It was Aunt Betty's forethought which had advised this, saying:

"Let Chloe understand, in the beginning, that she is the helper--not
the chief."

Leaving them to examine and delight in the compact arrangements of the
galley she sped up the crooked stair to old Captain Jack. To her
surprise she found him anything but the sunny old fellow who had
strutted aboard, and he greeted her with a sharp demand:

"Where's them papers at?"

"Papers? What papers?"

"Ship's papers, child alive? Where's your gumption at?"

Dorothy laughed and seated herself on a camp-stool beside him.

"Reckon it must be 'at' the same place as the 'papers.' I certainly
don't understand you."

"Land a sissy! 'Spect we'd be let to sail out o' port 'ithout showin'
our licenses? Not likely; and the fust thing a ship's owner ought to
'tend to is gettin' a clean send off. For my part, I don't want to hug
this dock no longer. I want to take her out with the tide, I do."

Dorothy was distressed. How much or how little this old captain of an
oyster boat knew about this matter, he was evidently in earnest and
angry with somebody--herself, apparently.

"If we had any papers, and we haven't--who'd we show them to, anyway?"

Captain Hurry looked at her as if her ignorance were beyond belief.
Then his good nature made him explain:

"What's a wharf-master for, d'ye s'pose? When you hand 'em over I'll
see him an' up anchor."

But, at that moment, Mr. Carruthers himself appeared on the roof of
the cabin, demanding:

"What's up, Cap'n Jack? Why don't you start--if it's you who's to
manage this craft, as you claim? If you don't cut loose pretty quick,
my Elsa will get hom