“What’s the name, Chub?” Dick asked.
“‘The Old Harry,’” answered Chub. “That’s the way she behaved.”
“That’s not so bad,” laughed Roy. Harry looked doubtful.
“I don’t think I’d like that,” she said finally. “People might think it
was named after me.”
“Yes,” said Dick, apparently pleased to find an objection to the name.
“Besides, I had about decided on a name myself.”
“What is it?” asked Chub.
“Well--have you noticed the sound she makes when she’s going?”
“No,” replied Chub, “she was going such a short time that I didn’t have
a chance.”
“She says ‘_puff, puff, puff!_’ like that,” said Roy.
“No, she doesn’t,” answered Dick. “I thought that was it at first, but
what she really says is ‘_pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, pup!_’ So I’m going
to call her the ‘Pup.’”
“That’s all right,” said Chub admiringly. And Roy agreed. But Harry
objected.
“I think it’s a perfectly horrid name,” she declared. “You’re just
fooling, aren’t you, Dick?”
“Not a bit of it,” answered Dick stoutly. “I think it’s a fine name.”
And in the end, despite Harry’s negative vote, the name was formally
adopted.
“We’ll have a christening,” suggested Roy. “And Harry can be
sponsor--if that’s what you call it--and break a bottle of--of
something over her bow.”
“It’ll have to be tomato catsup, I guess,” laughed Dick. “That’s about
all we’ve got.”
“I refuse to have the catsup wasted,” said Chub. “Besides, it would be
terribly messy. We’ll find an empty bottle and fill it with water. They
christen lots of boats with water nowadays.”
So after dinner the ceremony took place. They rowed out to the launch
in the skiff, Harry tightly clasping a bottle of river water. They had
found the bottle on the beach. The lettering on one side proclaimed
the fact that it had at one time been filled with “Brainard’s Lucky
Discovery for Coughs and Colds.” When they had all climbed aboard the
launch Chub had an idea.
“Look here,” he exclaimed, “we’re not doing this right. She ought to be
christened with gasolene!”
“Of course!” cried the others in chorus. So the water was poured
out and the bottle was held under the carbureter and filled with
gasolene. Then Roy and Dick and Chub grouped themselves as imposingly
as possible on the small space of deck at the bow, maintaining their
precarious positions by holding onto each other, and Harry re-embarked
in the rowboat, working it around to the bow of the launch.
“The band will now play,” said Chub. “_Tum_, tumty, tum; _Tum_, tumty,
tum; _Tum_--”
“That’s the wedding march, you idiot,” laughed Roy. So Chub struck up
“Hail, Columbia” instead.
“Now,” he said, “we will listen to an address by the Honorable Roy
Porter. Hear! Hear!” And he clapped his hands so strenuously that
he very nearly precipitated the entire company into the water. The
Honorable Roy Porter not being inclined to fulfil his portion of the
program, Commodore Dickums Somes was called upon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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