l one has to do with the rubbish is just to drop it
overboard. The fishes will come and clean it up. It's easy to keep house
on a houseboat. We're going to have a fine time this summer. I feel it
in my bones."

The supper work was cleared away quickly. Jane filled the hanging lamps,
while Harriet trimmed and filled the lantern that was to be put out as a
night light so that other craft should not run into them during the
night.

"All hands on deck!" commanded Harriet, after the last of the work had
been finished.

"That reminds me. We must elect our officers," said Miss Elting, after
the girls had climbed to the pleasant upper deck. "Whom shall we have
for our captain?"

"I gueth Harriet will make a good captain," suggested Tommy.

The girls agreed to this.

"I suggest then, that Jane McCarthy be chief officer--that is, the next
in line to the captain--with Margery as purser, Hazel as third officer,
and Tommy, what would you like to be?" asked Miss Elting.

"I gueth I'll be the pathenger," decided little Tommy wisely.

There was a chorus of protests at this.

"You and I will be the fourth and fifth officers respectively,"
announced the guardian.

"What doeth the fourth offither do?"

"Not much of anything."

Tommy nodded approvingly.

"Then I am that," she announced. "Harriet ith a good captain. Harriet
knowth thomething about everything."

Harriet shook her head. She protested that she knew nothing at all about
any boat larger than a rowboat. To be the captain of a scow, was
something of a responsibility. She knew that she would have to be
captain in fact as well as in name, and that the navigation and
protection of the craft would be on the shoulders of Jane McCarthy and
herself.

"There is one thing I do not know, Tommy," answered Harriet. "I don't
know how this captain is ever going to get along with the crew she has.
I fear she will have to ship a new crew. Perhaps you'll be glad of that,
eh, dears?"

"Tommy would be willing if, as she already has said, she could be the
whole passenger list," chuckled Miss Elting.

The girls joked and talked until the night had fallen. A few faint rays
of light filtered through the cabin windows and the dim light from the
anchor lantern that hung at the stern of the boat was their only
illumination.

Harriet got up and walked to the bow of the boat, now pointed outward.
She sniffed the air.

"Well, what is it, Captain?" inquired Jane.

"Wind," answered