"Well, I ain't," returned Mollie, truthfully. "You got to lace yourself in, an' keep buttoned up tight an' wear tight shoes an' keep your stockings fastened up an' your head full o' hairpins if you wants to look neat, when you're fat, like I be. I hates all of them things. I'd ruther be comfortable." Jeanne had often wondered how soft, plump Mollie _could_ be comfortable with strands of red hair straggling about her face, with her fat neck exposed to the weather, her uncorseted figure billowing under her shapeless wrapper, her feet scuffling about in shoes several times too large. Even when dressed for the street, she was not much neater. But that was Mollie. Gentle as she was and thoroughly sweet-tempered, it was as impossible to stir her to action as it was to upset her serenity. As for wrath, Mollie simply hadn't any. "You could burn the house down," declared Mrs. Shannon, "an' Mollie'd crawl into the Cinder Pond an' set there an' _sleep_. Her paw died just because he was too lazy to stay alive, and she's just like him--red hair and all. If it was _red_ red hair, there'd be some get up and go to them Shannons; but it _ain't_. It's just _carrot_ red, with yaller streaks." "When Annie's hair has just been washed," championed Jeanne, after one of Mrs. Shannon's outbursts against the family's red-gold locks, "it's lovely. And if Sammy ever had a lazy hair in _his_ head, I guess Michael pulled it out that time they had a _fight_ about the fish-pole." "Where's Sammy now?" asked his grandmother, suspiciously. "'Tain't safe to leave him alone a minute. He's always pryin' into things." "He and Michael are trying to pull a board off the dock for firewood." That was one convenient thing about the wharf. You could live on it and use it for firewood, too, provided you were careful not to take portions on which one needed to walk. To anyone but the long-practiced Duvals, however, most of the dock presented a most uninviting surface--a dangerous one, in fact. If you stepped on the end of a plank, it was quite apt to go down like a trap-door, dropping you into the lake below. If you stepped in the middle, just as likely as not your foot would go through the decayed board. But only the long portion running east and west was really dangerous. The section between the Duvals and dry land, owing to the accumulation of cinders and soil, bound together with roots of growing plants, was fairly safe. "Of course," said Jeanne, who sometimes wished for Patsy's sake that there were fewer holes in the wharf, "if it were a _good_ dock, we wouldn't be allowed to live on it. And if people _could_ walk on it, people _would_; and that would spoil it for us. As it is, it's just the loveliest spot in the whole world." CHAPTER VII A MATTER OF COATS Mrs. Shannon had been right about Mr. Duval. He _was_ saving money. Also, it was for Jeanne; or, at least, for a purpose that closely concerned that little maiden.