Children -- Death -- Juvenile fiction; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Farm life -- Juvenile fiction; Siblings -- Juvenile fiction
The Merry-go-round was found in good condition, only with her
seams a little, or not a little, opened. That trouble however
was got over by the help of a little caulking and submersion
and time; and she floated again as lightly as ever. Some days
still passed, owing to weather or other causes, before the
first evening came when they went out to try her.
That evening, -- it was the seventeenth of August, and very
fair, -- they went down to the rocks, just when the afternoon
had grown cool in the edge of the evening. Winnie put herself
in the stern of the little white boat, and Winthrop took his
old place and the oars. Winnie's eyes were sparkling.
"It will be harder work to pull than it used to be," she
remarked joyously, -- "you're so out of the habit of it."
Winthrop only replied by pushing the little skiff off.
"However," continued Winnie, "I guess it isn't much to pull me
anywhere."
"Which way shall we go?" said Winthrop, one or two slow
strokes of his oar sending the little boat forward in a way
that made Winnie smile.
"I don't know -- I want to go everywhere -- Let's go up,
Winthrop, and see how it looks -- Let's go over under Wut-a-
qut-o. O how beautiful it is, Winthrop! --"
Winthrop said nothing, but a repetition of those leisurely
strokes brought the boat swiftly past the cedars and rocks of
Shahweetah's shore and then out to the middle of the river,
gradually drawing nearer to the other side. But when the mid-
river was gained, high enough up to be clear of the
obstructing point of Shahweetah, Winnie's ecstatic cry of
delight brought Winthrop's head round; and with that he lay
upon his oars and looked too. He might. The mountains and the
northern sky and clouds were all floating as it were in a warm
flush of light -- it was upon the clouds, and through the air,
and upon the mountains' sides, -- so fair, so clear, but beyond
that, so rich in its glowing suffusion of beauty, that eyes
and tongue were stayed, -- the one from leaving the subject,
the other from touching it. Winthrop's oars lay still, the
drops falling more and more slowly from the wet blades. The
first word was a half awed whisper from Winnie --
"O Winthrop, -- did you ever see it look so?"
The oars dipped again, and again lay still.
"Winthrop, this isn't much like Mannahatta!" Winnie said next,
under breath.
The oars dipped again, and this time to purpose. The boat
began to move slowly onward.
"But Winthrop you don't say anything?" Winnie said uneasily.
"I don't know how."
"I wish I could keep a picture of that," she went on with
regretful accent as her eyes turned again to the wonderful
scene before them in the north, floating as it seemed in that
living soft glow.
"I shall keep a picture of it," said Winthrop.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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