St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, No. 07, May 1878: Scribner's IllustratedVarious
General
St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, No. 07, May 1878: Scribner's Illustrated
Various
Children's literature -- Periodicals; Children's periodicals, American
"He'll wake up sure, if I try to carry him up the hill. See how nice he
lays; and I'll hang the end of the shawl over this net-pole. I can see
it plain enough from the cove. If he wakes up, he'll be tumblin' round
and pull it off, so I'll know when to come back for him."
"Well, it takes a girl for contrivance," Perry said; and it was
something in his manner rather than the words which made Mandy, as she
followed the two boys, vaguely feel she was disapproved of.
The cove was a half-circle of pebble beach, washed by the ripples of a
slowly rising tide, with a wall of gray slate rock at the back.
Hemlock-trees leaned from the steep wooded cliff above, the shadows of
their boughs moving with the wind across the sunny face of the rock.
It was very warm and still and bright. Mandy climbed to a perch high up
in the twisted roots of an old hemlock, who, having ventured too far
over the edge of the cliff, was clinging there, desperately driving his
tough toes into the crevices of the rock, and wildly waving his boughs
upward and backward as if imploring help from his comrades, safe in the
dark wood above.
The river spread broad and bright below her. Mandy listened, in happy
silence, to all the mysterious rustlings and twitterings and cracklings
in the wood above, and the sounds, far and near, from the river below.
Now and then she looked to see if the shawl still fluttered from the
net-pole. She was glad she came, and it seemed but a very little while
before the fish were all cleaned, and the boys, sitting on a rock,
skipping pebbles, and watching for Perry Kent's father, who was coming
in his boat to take the fish up to the hotel.
Perry's father was always called Cap'n Kent. He kept a kind of floating
restaurant. One end of his boat was boarded over into a closet, with
shelves filled with a supply of fresh fruit and berries in the season,
cider, cakes, pies, root-beer, lemons, crackers, etc. His customers
were chiefly the "hands" on board sloops becalmed opposite the landing,
or passing barges and canal-boats, slowly trailed in the wake of a
panting propeller, or escorted by dingy little "tugs," struggling along
like lively black beetles.
The "Cap'n" was a very tall man, and his arms were so long that, as he
rowed, he sat quite upright, only stretching his arms back and forth,
scarcely bending his body at all. This gave great dignity to his
appearance in a boat. His feet were very long too, and when he walked
he lifted the whole foot at once, and put it down flat. Of course he
could not walk very fast; but so important a person as the "Cap'n"
could never be in a hurry.
As he held his boat against a rock while Perry lifted in the basket of
fish, he saw the wistful faces of the children standing on the beach.
Now, the "Cap'n" considered himself a very good-natured man, and
good-natured men are always fond of children. So he called out in a
loud voice:
"Whose little folks are you?"
"Bub and Mandy Lewis," Mandy answered quickly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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