Chapter 3 - Page 2

"Not in that cherry-coloured rig ner them ha'afbaked brown shoes.
Give him suthin' fit to wear."

"Dad's pleased - that settles it," said Dan, delightedly, dragging
Harvey into the cabin, while Troop pitched a key down the steps.
"Dad keeps my spare rig where he kin overhaul it, 'cause ma sez
I'm keerless." He rummaged through a locker, and in less than
three minutes Harvey was adorned with fisherman's rubber boots
that came half up his thigh, a heavy blue jersey well darned at
the elbows, a pair of flippers, and a sou'wester.

"Naow ye look somethin' like," said Dan. "Hurry!"

"Keep nigh an' handy," said Troop, "an' don't go visitin' raound
the fleet. Ef any one asks you what I'm cal'latin' to do, speak
the truth - fer
ye don't know."

A little red dory, labelled Hattie S., lay astern of the schooner.
Dan hauled in the painter, and dropped lightly on to the bottom
boards, while Harvey tumbled clumsily after.

"That's no way o' gettin' into a boat," said Dan. "Ef there was
any sea you'd go to the bottom, sure. You got to learn to meet
her."

Dan fitted the thole-pins, took the forward thwart, and watched
Harvey's work. The boy had rowed, in a ladylike fashion, on the
Adirondack ponds; but there is a difference between squeaking pins
and well-balanced rowlocks - light sculls and stubby, eight-foot
sea-oars. They stuck in the gentle swell, and Harvey grunted.

"Short! Row short!" said Dan. "Ef you cramp your oar in any kind
o' sea you're liable to turn her over. Ain't she a daisy? Mine,
too."

The little dory was specklessly clean. In her bows lay a tiny
anchor, two jugs of water, and some seventy fathoms of thin, brown
dory-roding. A tin dinner-horn rested in cleats just under
Harvey's right hand, beside an ugly-looking maul, a short gaff,
and a shorter wooden stick. A couple of lines, with very heavy
leads and double cod-hooks, all neatly coiled on square reels,
were stuck in their place by the gunwale.

"Where's the sail and mast?" said Harvey, for his hands were
beginning to blister.

Dan chuckled. "Ye don't sail fishin'-dories much. Ye pull; but ye
needn't pull so hard. Don't you wish you owned her?"

"Well, I guess my father might give me one or two if I asked 'em,"
Harvey replied. He had been too busy to think much of his family
till then.

"That's so. I forgot your dad's a millionaire. You don't act
millionary any, naow. But a dory an' craft an' gear" - Dan spoke
as though she were a whale-boat "costs a heap. Think your dad 'u'd
give you one fer - fer a pet like?"

"Shouldn't wonder. It would be 'most the only thing I haven't
stuck him for yet."

"Must be an expensive kinder kid to home.