“Oh, safe as a tub!” agreed Jim, hastily, intending the remark as conciliatory.

“Huh!  Perhaps you never tried to pilot a tub,” interposed Leo.  “I did the other day, just for practice, so I’d know how to row when the time came to use this here punt—­if that’s what you call it.  Jimminy!  I got tipped over into the creek, and a scolding besides when I went home!  I’d be sorry to have her act like that.”

“A tub is a tub and a boat is a boat,” said Jack, sententiously.  “This one couldn’t tip over if it tried.  Don’t you see it’s most square?  In fact, we didn’t mean to get it quite so wide; but, after all, it is better than those canoe-like things, which are always rocking from one side to the other.”

“What are you going to name it?” asked Jim.

Jack looked nonplussed.  This necessity had not occurred to him before.  He appealed to Rob.

“Suppose,” replied the latter, after mature deliberation,—­“suppose we call it the Sylph?  There’s a, story in the Boys’ Own about a beautiful boat called the Sylph.”

“Cricky! it looks about as much like a sylph as—­well, as Mary Ann does!” said Jim.  Since the stout, good-natured cook was heavy, and nearly square in figure, the comparison was amusingly apt.

“Do you remember the tents at Coney Island in summer, where a regular wooden circus procession goes round in a ring, keeping time to the music?” asked Leo.

“Yes, and by paying five cents you can take your choice, and ride on a zebra or a lion or a big gold ostrich, or anything that’s there.  And once we chose a scrumptious boat, all blue and silver, and drawn by two swans,” responded Jim.

“Well, what was the name of that?” said Leo.

“I think the man told us she was known as the Fairy,” answered Jim.

Again they looked at the boat and shook their heads.  It would not do.

“I did not mean the name of the blue and silver barge, but of the whole thing—­the ring and all?” added Leo.

“Oh, the Merry-go-Round,” said Jack.

“Why would not that be a good name?” argued Rob, pleased with the sound, and, like many a person whose fancy is caught by the jingle of a word, paying little attention to its sense.

“That is what I thought,” began Leo, delighted to find his motion seconded, as he would have explained in the language of the juvenile debating society, which met periodically in that very barn.

“Why! do you expect this boat to keep going round and round when we get it out into the middle of the creek?” said practical Jack, pretending to be highly indignant at the imputation.

“No indeed,” disclaimed Rob.  “Only that she would go around everywhere—­up and down the stream, you know; and on an exploring expedition, as we proposed.”

“That is not so bad,” Jack admitted.  “Still, I think we could get a better name.  Let us see!  The Merry Sailor,—­how’s that?”