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Now if I'd had the building of this craft, I would have floated all the material down to the mouth of the creek. Then everything would have been ready for a start as soon as she was finished." "How would you have loaded the wheat?" demanded Elta. "Why, boated it down, of course." "And so added largely to its cost," answered the practical girl.
I can get dry by the stove at the same time. I'll have a chance to see Elta before bedtime, and she'd feel badly if I didn't eat her supper anyway."
The raft in which he had taken so much pride, his father's raft upon which so much depended, the raft on which he had expected to float out into the great world, was gone, and he was powerless to follow it. All through his own fault, too! This thought was the hardest to bear. Why, even Elta would have known better. Of course she would.
Is it dirty?" asked the young man. For answer Mrs. Caspar led him in front of a mirror. "Well, I should say it was dirty! In fact, dirty is no name at all for it!" he laughed. "I believe I look about as bad as Binney Gibbs did when he covered himself with 'mud and glory' at the same time, or rather when his mule did it for him." "Who is Binney Gibbs?" asked both Mrs. Caspar and Elta. "Binney?
I only hope it will bring plenty of rain and high-water. Then good-bye to home, and hurrah for the great river!" By this chain of thought Winn was again reminded of Elta, and of the forgiveness he had meant to secure from her that evening. "It is too late now, though," he said to himself.
As if my father would ever do anything to make me afraid of him! And mother! How badly she would feel if I should disappear without ever giving her the comfort of knowing I was dead. There is Elta, too, and the very last time I saw her I was ugly to her. Oh dear! I wish well, I wish, for one thing, that I could get inside that 'shanty, and out of this miserable drizzle.
"Besides, Winn is aboard," he reflected, "and he is almost certain to rouse us all with the joyful news the minute he finds that the raft is afloat." Thus reassuring himself, the Major turned over and went comfortably to sleep. Elta knew nothing of the storm until morning, but hearing the rain the moment she awoke, she too recognized it as the signal for the Venture's speedy departure.
You know that, much as I want to see mother and Elta, I simply must find that raft, or, at any rate, help you do it. You couldn't send me home, either, unless you borrowed a pair of handcuffs from the Sheriff and put me in irons. Anyway, I don't believe you'd have the heart. If I thought for a moment that you had, I'd well, I'd disappear again, that's all." "All right," laughed Billy Brackett.
If he had needed proof other than his certain knowledge of the little craft, it was at hand; for, as he pointed out to Billy Brackett, there were his initials, rudely cut with a jack-knife, just inside the gunwale. How well he remembered carving them, one sunny afternoon, when he and Elta were drifting down the creek! Yes, indeed, it was his canoe fast enough, but how came it there?
I have noticed that young people are much more apt to be influenced by those only a few years older than themselves than they are by persons whose ideas they may regard as antiquated or old-fogyish." "Oh, papa, how can you say so?" cried Elta, springing up and throwing her arms about his neck. "How can you say that you could ever be an old fogy?"
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