“Like boats?” the captain asked him, finding the little boy at his elbow.

“I don’t know much about them,” admitted Bobby.  “Shall we have a boat like this?  Daddy left the car in the garage.”

“A car’s no good on the water,” said the captain loftily.  “What you want is a seaworthy, tight little craft.  You’re going to live in the Winthrop bungalow, aren’t you?  Well, then, you’ll have two rowboats.”

“Then Dot and I can have one,” Twaddles remarked with satisfaction.

Captain Jenks looked at him in some amazement.

“Wait till you try to lift an oar,” was his comment.  “Hey, little girl, you’ll get grease on your dress.”

“She has already,” said Meg calmly.  “She always does.  Are you named for the Captain Jenks in the rime?”

“Captain-Jenks-of-the-horse-marines-he-fed-his-hors
e-good-pork-and-beans?” inquired the captain glibly and in one breath.  “Well, no, I don’t think I was—­not that I remember.  One of the fellers that was up here last year made me a piece of poetry about my name.  Want to hear it?”

The four little Blossoms nodded eagerly.

“Here ’tis,” said the captain.  “Short and sweet: 

   “Captain Jenks has a motor-boat,
    He feeds it oil to make it float.”

“What comes next?” demanded Dot.

“That’s all,” said the captain.  “And here we are at Apple Tree Island!”

“I hope you haven’t been talked to death,” Father Blossom said to Captain Jenks when he came to tell the children it was time to get off.  “My wife and I were trying to see if we could recognize the places we knew seven years ago.”

“Can’t give me too many children,” said the captain heartily.  “Any time you don’t know what to do with these youngsters, you have ’em on the wharf when I tie up; I’ll take ’em on my rounds with me and bring them back safely.”

CHAPTER X

ON THE ISLAND

There was a small wharf built out from a bank of green grass, and here the Blossoms landed, after bidding Captain Jenks a friendly good-by.  They had been so busy talking to him, the children, that is, that they had never looked to see where the boat was taking them.

Apple Tree Island was only about half a mile from the shore, but perhaps a quarter of a mile further from Greenpier, where the stores and the post-office and the boathouse were built.  A bend in the lake hid the island from the town.  The ten or so other islands which Mr. Harley had mentioned were all further up the lake.

Mr. Harley had been mistaken in his estimation of the size of Apple Tree Island.  It was in reality one of the smallest and, Father Blossom thought, less than two miles around its shoreline.  It was diamond shaped, and the Winthrop bungalow was now the only building on it.  Mr. Harley’s shack no longer counted, and the summer home of the invalid for whom Father Blossom made yearly trips to the island, had burned to the ground during the winter.  So the Blossoms would be the only people on the island this year.