"Miss Julia must have been in a great hurry," she ventured.
"Yes, a ten-dollar hurry," growled David.
"Oh, you won't fine her!" Courage exclaimed, alarmed at the mere thought of anything so ungracious; "she just couldn't have been thinking."
"Well, then, we'll just teach her how to think;" but Sylvia, quite sure that she detected a lack of determination in David's tone, said complacently, "Neber you fear, Miss Courage. Mr. David don' sure nuff mean what he sez, I reckon," whereupon Mr. David shook his head, as much as to say, "Well, he rather guessed he did," but Courage saw with relief that there really was nothing to fear. After supper Larry and David took a turn on the bridge while the table was being cleared, and then coming back to the little living-room, Courage read aloud for an hour from one of Sylvia Sylvester's namesake books. It chanced to be the incomparable story of "Alice in Wonderland," and David and Larry were as charmed as the little folk themselves. At nine o'clock the book was laid away and Larry went directly to bed. Courage and Sylvia hurried into coats and hats for a run in the bracing night air, and David, stopping first to light his pipe, followed them out onto the bridge. All three found to their surprise that the sky had grown suddenly lowering and overcast, while the breeze of the twilight was fast stiffening to a vigorous west wind.
"We're in for a blow, I'm thinkin'," said David, looking down-river, with the children standing beside him, "and, bless me! there isn't a star to be seen. Who'd a-thought it after that sunset."
Courage, seeing something in the distance, paid no attention to this last remark. "Mr. David, what's that?" she exclaimed, pointing in the direction in which she had been gazing.
"Sure it looks like a sail, Courage. Can it be that they're wantin' to get through, I wonder? What's a boat out for this time o' night, anyhow?" Then for several minutes all was silent.
"Listen," said Sylvia at last; "doesn't that sound like rowing?"
"Yes it do," said David, after listening intently, his hand to his ear. "I thought it didn't 'pear just like a sail-boat; howsomever, there's a white thing dangling to it that looks--" but here David was interrupted by a coarse voice calling out, "Hello there! Open the draw, will you?"