At the door Peggy had an idea, and halted. "There isn’t any boat that we could get around here, is there? I’d like to take those children out on the water if I could."
The farmer’s wife came to the door. "Why, we’ve got an old dug-out tied down under the willows. It leaks a little, but you’d have to load it with stone to sink it. We keep it there, ’cause it’s handier if we want to go to Mr. Miller’s, t’other side of the lake, to row across, than to go all the way ’round. ’Tain’t so easy rowing as it might be, but you’re welcome to it if you want it."
The ungainly craft, tied under the sheltering willow trees, did not look as if it would be so easy rowing. But the girls undaunted, took their seats, each with a pair of oars, and started bravely for the other shore, the water slapping the square end of the dug-out, as if the two were in a plot to make progress slow and difficult. The appearance of the boat was hailed with shrieks of delight by the Dunn family, who rushed to the water’s edge to view its advance.
"There’s room enough for all of them at once, if it wouldn’t be too heavy," Peggy remarked.
"O, I guess we can take them all," returned Elaine, tugging at her oars. "They’ll be satisfied if we just keep it moving, you know."
"They’re all waiting to welcome us." Peggy glanced at the row of motionless figures, ranged along the shore as if held spell-bound by the spectacle afforded by the stately craft and the toiling oarsmen. Then instinctively Peggy began counting, "Three, four, five. Where’s number five?"
"It’s one of the little girls that’s missing, Estelle or Isabel. I can’t tell them apart." Elaine’s eyes travelled from the waiting row, across a clump of trees reaching to the water’s edge, on to the cleared acres belonging to the Miller farm. Then she uttered a startled exclamation.
"Peggy! See that child! Will she know enough to let them alone?"
"What? Where?" Wildly Peggy’s eyes followed those of her friend, and at the sight which had prompted Elaine’s frightened question Peggy rested on her oars, staring blankly ahead.
Against the green of the hillside rows of little white boxes stood out in bold relief. Among them wandered Isabel Dunn, as Gulliver might have wended his way among the habitations of Lilliput, looking about her with a curiosity that betrayed no twinge of timidity.
