"That means she's starting," said the jitney man. "Run!"
And hand in hand, Mother Blossom and Dot raced down the wharf and over the gangplank on to the deck of the boat, just as it began to slide away.
"We thought you weren't coming," said Meg anxiously.
"Where did you find Dot?" asked Bobby and Twaddles in the same breath.
"I came back myself," she informed them. "The jitney man told me how."
Mother Blossom sat down on a camp-stool and fanned herself with Twaddles' blue sailor hat.
"See if we can't get to Brookside without any more mishaps," she commanded the children. "If we had missed the boat, think of the worry and trouble for Aunt Polly. Even if we telegraphed she wouldn't get it before she started over to meet us."
The four little Blossoms promised to be very good and to stay close together.
Lake Tobago was a small lake, very pretty, and for some minutes the children saw enough on the shores they were passing to keep them contented and interested. In one place two little boys and their father were out fishing in a rowboat and the steamer passed so close to them that the four little Blossoms, leaning over the rail, could almost shake hands with them.
"There's another wharf! Do we stop there? Yes, we do! Come on, Dot, let's watch!" shouted Twaddles, as the steamer headed inshore toward a pier built out into the water.
"Keep away from the gangplank," warned Mother Blossom. "You mustn't get in people's way, dear."
The pier was something of a disappointment, because when the boat tied up there the children discovered that only freight was to be taken off and more boxes carried on. There was only one man at the wharf, and apparently no town for miles.
"Doesn't anybody live here?" asked Twaddles, almost climbing over the rail in his eagerness to see everything.
"Sure! There's a town back about half a mile," explained the deck-hand who was carrying on a crate of live chickens. "This is just where farmers drive in with their stuff."
"Let me see the chickens," cried Dot, climbing up beside her brother.
Her elbow knocked his hat, and because he hadn't the elastic under his chin, it went sailing over on to the wharf. One of the men rolling a barrel toward the steamer did not see the hat and calmly rolled his barrel over it.
