“Did you ever hear anything so absurd?” said Minerva.

“I think it would be picturesque,” said Dora.

“And sensible, too,” said Margaret, “because some of those scouts will just stay here and gorge themselves and won’t dance at all.”

“I think it’s a very good idea,” said Townsend; “it will relieve congestion here.  A food traffic cop.”

“I’ll be it,” shouted Pee-wee.

“Where is this romantic scaffold?” Townsend asked.

“The painters left it in the cellar,” said Minerva.  “Let’s hurry, I’ll show you where it is.”

There was, indeed, just time enough to arrange this novel life-saving station with its picturesque gang-plank before the guests began to arrive.

“And this is the end of our wild adventures on a foreign shore,” said Townsend, as he carried one end of the old scaffold across the dim-lighted lawn accompanied by the group of excited maidens; “we wind up at a lawn party.  This is what the discoverer has brought us to.”

“Don’t you think he’s just killing?” Minerva asked.

“More than that,” said Townsend; “his hunter’s stew is more than killing.  Did you ever try any of it?”

“Never mind, you’re going to have some delicious chicken salad,” said Minerva.

The boys, under Minerva’s enthusiastic supervision, tied the island about six feet from shore.  The romantic gang-plank kept it from drifting closer in while two clothes-poles driven into the bottom of the river just below it prevented it from drifting with the ebbing tide.  Pee-wee’s trusty clothesline was stretched between the little apple tree and the overhanging rhododendron bushes as an auxiliary mooring and to hold the island steady.

Thus secured and free from the prosaic shore, the romantic isle presented an inviting scene, with the little tent upon it and Japanese lanterns shedding a mellow light from the bushes and the securing clothesline.  The rippling water flickered with a gentle and undulating glow and inverted paper lanterns could be seen reflected beneath the surface, as if indeed the beholder could look down and see romantic and picturesque Japan on the opposite side of the earth.

The scaffold, forgetting its prosy usage, was resplendent in a winding robe of bunting and on its railing where cans of white lead and linseed oil had disported hung lanterns of every color in the rainbow.  To this enchanted isle would stroll dance-weary couples and famishing scouts to regale themselves in this dim, detached, earthly paradise.

“Wait a minute, oh, just wait a minute!” cried Minerva in the spell of such an inspiration as comes only once in a lifetime.  “Oh, just wait one minute.”

She hurried across the lawn, returning presently with a huge, spotless apron with strings of goodly dimension which, in a very glow of inspired joy, she tied around the waist of Pee-wee Harris.  It was necessary to shorten it by a series of pokes and pushes by which it was tucked up under its own strings and lifted clear of the adventurous feet of the scout.  Nor was that all, for somewhere out of the mysterious depths of the house, Minerva had brought a starched and snowy chef’s cap with which she crowned our hero.