breath come as fast as anything. I guess that's what Trouble is doing."

"No, I is _not_!" exclaimed the little boy, who heard what his sister
and brother were saying about him. "I 'ist is swimmin', like I did at
Cherry Farm," he said. "I play I is in the water."

"I guess he's ready to play steamboat, all right," laughed Jan. "Come
along, little fat Trouble!" she called, and she helped him get up the
last of the steps that led to the attic.

The children found an old easy chair. It was one Mr. Martin had made
some years before, and was a folding one. It had a large frame, and
could be made higher and lower by putting a cross bar of wood in some
niches. The seat of the chair was made of a strip of carpet, but this
had, long ago, worn to rags and the chair had been put in the attic
until some one should find time to mend it. But this time never seemed
to come.

Often, before, Ted, Jan and Trouble had played steamboat with it. They
laid it down flat, and then raised up the front legs and the frame part
that fitted into the back legs. These two parts they tied together and
could move it back and forth, while they made believe the carpet part of
the chair was the deck of the boat.

"All aboard!" called Janet, as Teddy laid the chair down on the floor.

"Wait a minute!" called her brother.

"What for?" Janet wanted to know.

"'Cause I haven't got the steerin' wheel fixed. I got to get that, else
the boat will go the wrong way. Wait until I get the old spinning wheel
for a steerer."

Up in the attic, among many other things, was an old spinning wheel,
that used to belong to Mrs. Martin's mother's mother--that is the
great-grandmother of the Curlytops. The spinning part of the wheel had
been broken long before, but the wheel itself would go around and it
would make something to steer with, just as on the real large steamers,
Ted thought.

The spinning wheel was put in front of the chair steamboat, and then Jan
got on "board," as it is called.

"Wait for me!" cried Trouble, who was hunting in a corner of the attic
for something with which to have some fun.

"Oh, I won't forget you," laughed Jan, and then all three of the
children were ready for the trip across the make-believe ocean.

They crowded together on the carpet deck of the chair boat while Ted
twirled the wheel and Jan moved the legs back and forth as if they were
the engine. Trouble cried "Toot! Toot!" he being the whistle, and they
rode about--at lea