Country life -- Juvenile fiction; Girls -- Juvenile fiction; Grandparents as parents -- Juvenile fiction
But Judy shook her head. "No," she said, "we are on the end of the
peninsula, between the bay and the ocean. It is just salt marshes from
one end to the other, and no one lives on them. The best thing we can
do is to hail a boat."
"But there ain't any boats."
"There will be," said Judy, stoutly. "There are lots of little
schooners that take fruit and vegetables to the markets. Not many of
them come this way, but some of them do, and if we wait they will
rescue us."
After that they saw several sails, and waved Tommy's coat frantically,
but no one responded. As the twilight darkened into the night, a
steamer went by, her lights shining like jewels against the purple
background--red and green and yellow.
"If we only had a lantern," groaned Judy, as Tommy shouted himself
hoarse, and the steamer kept on her majestic way, leaving them
hopelessly behind.
"Maybe some one will see us in the morning." Judy was trying to
encourage Tommy, who had dropped down on the sand with his back to her,
but not before she had seen his working face, and his knuckles rubbing
his red eyes.
"I'm going to sleep," he muttered, still with his face away from her,
and with that he curled himself up against the big mound, as he had
done the night before, and forgot his troubles.
Judy lay on the sand watching the waves roll in, and thinking long
thoughts. She thought of her father, living, perhaps, on some such
lonely beach as this, but farther away from the haunts of men--alone,
looking at the same stars, searching a vaster expanse for the ship that
never came. She thought, too, of her mother, the gentle mother, whose
guarding presence she seemed to feel in the wonderful stillness. She
thought of their plans for her; that she might grow to gracious
womanhood, following in the footsteps of the women of her race, and
here she was--a runaway, reckless little girl, away from home at
midnight, chaperoned only by the wind and the waves, and with no roof
above her but the sky!
Under the solemn canopy of the night she made many resolves, cried a
little, and lay there with her eyes shut, but not asleep, feeling very
wicked, and very forlorn, and very, very hopeless.
When she opened her eyes again, the night was glorious. The moon had
risen, and its light made a silver pathway across the darkness of the
waters, and sailing straight towards her, its sails set to the fair
winds of heaven, came a little boat, dark against the shining
background.
Some one stood in the bow, straight and strong and young, and as Judy
watched in a half-dream, she remembered an opera she had seen once upon
a time; where a knight in silver armor had come on the back of a silver
swan to the lady he loved. She had hoped, mistily, that when she was
old enough for such things, that Love might come to her like that--over
the sea in silver armor, and sail away with her in a silver boat to the
end of the world!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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