“Yes, I found her. _She’s_ all right. She had a quantity of ice-cream in her ‘milk-bucket’ to take home.”
“Yes, and I stood and watched her safe over. I tell you she’s smarter than chain-lightning.”
He did not relate that he had found her crying bitterly, and that she had evidently suffered not only from fright but from wounded feeling. She had uttered no word of complaint, but her silent tears had given him a feeling of remorse he would never forget. He rose early next morning to caulk the old boat which lay useless in the barn. “Abbott” had promised to do it, but “Abbott” and the “Electric Light” were both inclined to forgetfulness, and all the hard tasks were sure to fall, sooner or later, on “the old man of the family.”
“I believe the concern is seaworthy now, and suppose we row across the river,” said he, when breakfast was despatched.
There were six little cries of ecstasy. It was “Dishes, take care of yourselves if you can;” and, as for food, the flies seemed disposed to take care of that.
It was a lovely morning, the atmosphere being particularly bright and clear after last night’s storm. Gorgeous red and gold butterflies hovered in the air, a robin in the front yard hopped along five steps, then stopped to look at the campers, and the eastern morning sun threw his shadow before him exactly his own size.
“It’s a perfect state of bliss to go rowing this morning,” exclaimed Mary, as they entered the boat.
“’Twas all we needed to make us perfectly happy,” remarked Sadie Patten, longing to repeat some poetry, but restrained by fear of Lucy.
The river Dee, though remarkably deep, was narrow and soon crossed.
“Let’s call on our Pancake friends before we go any farther. What say?” said Preston, helping the girls out of the boat.
It was just what he had come for; he wished to set his conscience at rest about Pecy; and the girls had understood and sympathized all the while, without a word being said.
The Pancakes lived in a small red cottage. Somebody says, “A red house blushes for the man who painted it;” but this house had more to blush for than that,—dirt and disorder without and within. It was badly weather-stained, and the windows were half glass, half rags. Outside there were two old tubs, a rake with stumpy teeth, and a mop lying across some battered tin pans. The children around the door were as shaggy-headed as their playmate, a lame old dog; and indeed the only graceful object about the premises was the soft blue smoke, which was happy enough to escape from the miserable house through the low chimney.