"Will you please stop talking about eating?" said Brownie.
"I know, but you'd think a rich man like Mr. Skybrow would make provision for a thing like that," said a boy they called Shorty.
"Will you please stop talking about provisions?" said Townsend.
"Will you please stop talking about nuts?" said Townsend.
"Well, what shall I talk about then?" Brownie asked.
"Talk about the rhododendron bushes," said Billy. "Look where a big clump was pulled away. Look at that one--all broken. These bushes will have to be all pruned."
"Will you please stop talking about prunes?" said Townsend.
"Will you please not mention the word ate?" said Townsend. "They ought to be thankful he left the lawn."
"What did his father say over the 'phone?" one asked.
"Oh, he didn't seem to worry," said Townsend. "He knows that the island is on a scow and that the river is small and that his son always lands right side up; that's what he said. I told him the island would come up with the tide and that we'd wait here and row out when he came in sight. He said there was no danger, that the discoverer is always lucky."
"Nothing short of an earthquake can capsize the island," Townsend said.
"He's a whole earthquake in himself," said Billy.
"More than that," said Shorty. "If I owned a restaurant I wouldn't leave it around, not unless there were buildings on both sides of it."
"Oh, that goes without saying," said Shorty.
"The blamed thing can't sink, can it?" Billy asked.
"I don't know how heavy his nine ideas are," said Townsend. "They would be the only thing that could sink it."
"Please don't say that word," Townsend pled.
"I think I see the lantern now," said Billy.
"I was afraid he might have eaten that----"
"It's probably all you get," said Townsend.
Pee-wee's surprising coup had not indeed caused any real anxiety in any quarter. It is true that his mother, answering Townsend's thoughtful 'phone call from the Skybrow home, had expressed concern at his being cast up with no companion but a banquet, but no one, not even his parents, feared for his safety.
The river was too tame and narrow, and the island altogether too secure upon its vast scow to introduce the smallest element of peril into his exploit. The tide would have to come up and upon its expanding bosom the gorged hero would return to his native land. Roy and his friends, knowing that Pee-wee's new victims were to rejoin him, went to their several homes to rifle kitchens and turn pantries inside out.