"This kind of weather? Naw!" said Jimmy Powers with scorn. "You rustle in to the cook shanty and get Corrigan to let you sit by the stove."
Bobby said farewell to his guide, and presented himself to the cook.
"I fell in," he announced, "can I sit by the stove?"
"Sure" said Corrigan hospitably. "Take a cracker-box and go over by the wood box. Tryin" to ride a log?"
"Yes" confessed Bobby.
"Well, you want to look out for them," warned Corrigan a little vaguely.
He produced the customary cooky. Bobby sat and steamed, and munched and told about the fish he had almost caught. He liked Corrigan because the latter talked to him sensibly, without ill-timed facetiousness, as to an equal. In a moment Duke thrust his muzzle in the door. Bobby looked hastily down. His clothes were quite dry.
"Don"t tell Papa," he begged.
For answer Corrigan portentously winked one eye, and went on peeling potatoes. After a moment Mr. Orde appeared at the door.
"Bobby here?" he inquired. "Oh yes! Come on, youngster."
Bobby showed himself with considerable trepidation; but apparently Mr.
Orde noticed nothing wrong, and the little boy"s spirits rose. The team was waiting, and they mounted the buggy at once. Duke fell in behind them soberly. For him the freshness of the expedition was over. It was now merely a case of get back home.
"Have a good time?" asked Mr. Orde.
Bobby talked busily all the way in. He told princ.i.p.ally of the fish, although the _Lucy Belle_ and Jimmy Powers came in for a share. From time to time Mr. Orde said, "That"s good," or, "Yes," which sufficed Bobby. Probably, however, the man heard little of his son"s talk. His mind was very busy with the elements of the game he was playing, sorting and arranging them, figuring how to earn and borrow the money necessary to permit his taking advantage of a chance he thought he saw in the western timber lands. He heard little, to be sure, and yet he was in reality wholly occupied with the child prattling away at his side--with his fortune, and his business prospects of thirty years hence.
Under the maples the sun slanted low and golden and mote-laden. Bobby suddenly felt a little tired, and more than a little hungry. He descended from the buggy with alacrity. The wetting was forgotten in the home-coming. Only when washing for dinner did he remember with certain self-felicitation that even his mother had noticed nothing. For the first time it occurred to him that his parents were not omniscient:--that was the evil of the afternoon"s experiences. For the first time also it occurred to him that he possessed the ability to meet an emergency without their aid:--that was the good of it. And the good far outweighed the evil.
That night Bobby called upon the Lord to bless those dear to him, as usual; but he offered on his own account an addendum.
"And make Bobby grow up a big man like Jimmy Powers."
II
THE PICNIC
One Sat.u.r.day, shortly after, everybody was early afoot in preparation for a picnic up the River. Bobby had on clean starched brown linen things, and his hair was parted on one side and very smoothly brushed across his forehead. His mother had been somewhat inclined to the dark green velvet suit with the lace collar, but to his great relief his father had intervened.
"Give the boy a chance," said he, "He"ll want to eat peaches and go down in the engine room, and perhaps catch sunfish."
At the wharf, built along the front of the river at the foot of Main Street, they could see, when they turned the corner at the engine-house, the single st.u.r.dy stack of the _Robert O_ pouring forth a cloud of gray smoke, while in front of it fluttered the white of the women"s dresses.
"We"re going to be late," danced Bobby.
"I guess they"ll wait for us," replied Mr. Orde easily. "They know what"s in this," he smiled, patting the hamper he was carrying.
At the wharf they were greeted by a chorus of exclamations from a large group of people. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were there, the latter sweet and dainty in one of the very latest creations in muslin; Mr. and Mrs.
Fuller with Tad and Clifford; young Mr. Carlin from the bank; Mr. and Mrs. Proctor, and their young-lady daughter wearing a marvellous "waterfall"; Angus McMullen, alone, his father detained professionally; Mrs. Cathcart and Georgie; young Bradford carrying his banjo, his wonderful raiment and his air of vast leisure; Welton, the lumberman, red-faced, jolly, popular and ungrammatical. The women guarded baskets.
All greeted the Ordes with various degrees of hilarity. When the noise had died down, a ma.s.sive and impressive lady, heretofore unnamed, stepped forward. She held a jewelled arm straight before her, the hand drooping slightly, so that, although she was in reality of but medium stature, she gave the impression of condescending from a height.
"Good morning, Mrs. Owen," greeted Mrs. Orde, shaking the proffered hand.
"Good morning, my dear," replied Mrs. Owen regally. She swept slowly sideways to reveal a woman and a little girl of seven or eight years, immediately behind her. "Allow me to present to you my very dear friend, Mrs. Carleton. Mrs. Carleton is from the city, staying at the Ottawa for a few weeks, and I knew you would like the chance to show her some of our beautiful River." Mrs. Carleton, a pretty, modish woman, with the ease of city manner, bowed quietly and murmured her pleasure. The little girl looked half bashfully through a wealth of natural curls at the grown-ups to whom she was presented in the off-hand method one employs with children. She was altogether a charming little girl. Her hair was of the colour of ripe wheat; her skin was of the light smooth brown peculiar to an exceptional blonde complexion tanned in the sun; her mouth was full and whimsical; and her eyes, strangely enough in one otherwise so light, were so black as to resemble spots. Her dress was very simple, very starched, very white. A big leghorn hat with red roses half hid her head. She was shy, that was easily to be seen; but shyness was relieved from the awkwardness so usual and so painful in children of her age by the results of what must have been a careful training. She answered when she was spoken to, directly and to the point; and yet it could not but be evident that her spirit fluttered.
The combination was charming; and Mrs. Orde fell to it at once.
"Celia, my dear," she said kindly, "come with me, we"re going to have a nice day together; and I have a little boy named Bobby who will show you everything."
But now the _Robert O_ gave two impatient toots. Everybody ceased greeting everybody else, and began to pile the shawls and lunch baskets aboard. The thick strong gunwale of the _Robert O_ was a foot or so below the chute level from the wharf. The women were helped aboard soberly by the men. Miss Proctor, however, slipped little slips and screamed little screams, while young Mr. Carlin, Bradford and Welton, with galvanized beaming smiles, all attempted to help her. Mrs. Owen marched down the chute, waited calmly and without impatience until all the available men were at hand, and then stepped down majestically with dignity unimpaired.
Long before this, Bobby had quit the altogether uninteresting wharf. The _Robert O_ he had seen many times from a distance, and once of twice near at hand lying at the cribs and piers, but this was his first chance to explore. Accordingly he dropped down to her deck, and, with the natural instinct to see as far ahead as possible, marched immediately to the very prow. The deck proved to slope up-hill strangely, which, in its unlikeness to any floor Bobby had ever walked on, was in itself a pleasure. The hawser around the bitt interested him; and the glimpse he had of the sparkling river slipping toward him from the yellow hills up stream. He could just rest his chin on the rail to look.
Then he turned his gaze aft; and encountered the amused scrutiny of a man leaning on a wheel in a little house. The house had big windows, and on top was an iron eagle with spread wings. Two steps led up to a door on each side; and Bobby without hesitation entered one of these doors.
The inside of the house he found different from any house he had ever been in before; and possessed of a strange fascination. There was the wheel, with projecting handles to every spoke, and above it, racks containing spygla.s.ses, black pipes, tobacco-tins. At hand projected a speaking-tube like that in the back hall at home, and two or three handles connected with wires. Behind the wheel was a broad leather seat; and clothes on nails; and a chart; and a pilot"s licence, of which Bobby understood nothing, but admired the round gold seals.
"Well, Bobby, what do you think of it?" asked the man.
Bobby had not had time to look at the man. He did so now and liked him.
The first thing he noticed was the man"s eyes, which were steady and unwavering and as blue as the sky. Then he surveyed in turn gravely his heavy bleached, flaxen moustache; his hard brown cheeks; the round barrel of his blue-clad body; and his short st.u.r.dy legs.
"Think you"d like to run a tug?" inquired this man.
"I don"t know," replied Bobby; "what is your name?"
"I"m Captain Marsh," replied the man. He glanced out the open door at the group on the wharf. "If they"re going up past the bend to-day, they"ll have to get a move," he remarked. "Here, Bobby, want to blow the whistle?"
He lifted the boy up in the hollow of one arm. "There, that"s it; that handle. Pull down on it, and let go."
Bobby did so and his little heart almost stopped at the shock of the blast, so loud was it, and so near.
"Now again," commanded Captain Marsh.
Bobby recovered and obeyed. The pa.s.sengers began to embark.
Captain Marsh watched until the last was safely aboard; then he set Bobby gently to the floor.
"If you want to see out, go sit on the bunk back there," he advised.
Somebody cast off the lines. Captain Marsh pulled the other handle. A sharp tinkling bell struck somewhere far in the depths of the craft.
Immediately Bobby felt beneath him the upheaval and trembling of some mighty force. The wharf seemed to slip back. In another moment at a second tinkle of the bell the tug had gathered headway, and the little boy was watching with delight the sandhills and buildings on one side and the other slipping by in regular succession.
Captain Marsh stood easily staring directly ahead of him, and paying no more attention to the child. Bobby sat very straight in his absorption.
New impressions were coming to him so fast that he had no desire to move. The slow turn of the great wheel; the throb of the engine; the swift pa.s.sing of water; the orderly procession of the river banks; the feeling of smooth, resistless motion--these sufficed. How long he might have sat there if undisturbed, it would be hard to say; but at the end of a few moments Angus McMullen looked in at the door.
"What you stayin" here for, Bobby?" he inquired with contemptuous wonder. "Come on out and see the big waves we"re making."