Hour after hour the child works, so still, so fervent, so earnest,--going over and over, time after time, her simple, ignorant methods to make it "look like," and stopping, at times, to give the true artist's sigh, as the little green and scarlet fragment lies there hopelessly, unapproachably perfect. Ignorantly to herself, the hands of the little pilgrim are knocking at the very door where Giotto and Cimabue knocked in the innocent child-life of Italian art. "Why won't it look round?" she said to Moses, who had come in behind her. "Why, Mara, did you do these?" said Moses, astonished; "why, how well they are done! I should know in a minute what they were meant for." Mara flushed up at being praised by Moses, but heaved a deep sigh as she looked back. "It's so pretty, that sprig," she said; "if I only could make it just like"-- "Why, nobody expects _that_," said Moses, "it's like enough, if people only know what you mean it for. But come, now, get your bonnet, and come with me in the boat. Captain Kittridge has just brought down our new one, and I'm going to take you over to Eagle Island, and we'll take our dinner and stay all day; mother says so." "Oh, how nice!" said the little girl, running cheerfully for her sun-bonnet. At the house-door they met Mrs. Pennel, with a little closely covered tin pail. "Here's your dinner, children; and, Moses, mind and take good care of her." "Never fear _me_ mother, I've been to the Banks; there wasn't a man there could manage a boat better than I could." "Yes, grandmother," said Mara, "you ought to see how strong his arms are; I believe he will be like Samson one of these days if he keeps on." So away they went. It was a glorious August forenoon, and the sombre spruces and shaggy hemlocks that dipped and rippled in the waters were penetrated to their deepest recesses with the clear brilliancy of the sky,--a true northern sky, without a cloud, without even a softening haze, defining every outline, revealing every minute point, cutting with sharp decision the form of every promontory and rock, and distant island. The blue of the sea and the blue of the sky were so much the same, that when the children had rowed far out, the little boat seemed to float midway, poised in the centre of an azure sphere, with a firmament above and a firmament below. Mara leaned dreamily over the side of the boat, and drew her little hands through the waters as they rippled along to the swift oars' strokes, and she saw as the waves broke, and divided and shivered around the boat, a hundred little faces, with brown eyes and golden hair, gleaming up through the water, and dancing away over rippling waves, and thought that so the sea-nymphs might look who came up from the coral caves when they ring the knell of drowned people. Moses sat opposite to her, with his coat off, and his heavy black curls more wavy and glossy than ever, as the exercise made them damp with perspiration.