They sat together in the canoe, each facing the other, Doris in the bow and Sally in the stern. A full, mid-September moon painted its rippling path on the water and picked out in silver every detail of shore and river. The air was full of the heavy scent of the pines, and the only sound was the ceaseless lap-lap of the lazy ripples at the water's edge. Doris had laid aside her paddle. Chin in hands, she was drinking in the radiance of the lovely scene.
"I simply cannot realize I am going home tomorrow and must leave all this!" she sighed at last.
Sally dipped her paddle disconsolately and answered with almost a groan:
"If it bothers you, how do you suppose it makes me feel!"
They sat together in the canoe
"We have grown close to each other, have n't we!" mused Doris. "Do you know, I never dreamed I could make so dear a friend in so short a time. I have plenty of acquaintances and good comrades, but usually it takes me years to make a real friend. How did you manage to make me care so much for you, Sally!"
"'Just because you 're you!'" laughed Sally, quoting a popular song. "But do you realize, Doris Craig, what a different girl I 've become since I knew and cared for you?"
She was indeed a different girl, as Doris had to admit. To begin with, she looked different. The clothes she wore were neat, dainty and appropriate, indicating taste and care both in choosing and wearing them. Her parents were comparatively well-to-do people in the village and could afford to dress her well and give her all that was necessary, within reason. It had been mainly lack of proper care, and the absence of any incentive to seem her best, that was to blame for the original careless Sally. And not only her looks, but her manners and English were now as irreproachable as they had once been provincial and faulty.
"Why, even my thoughts are different!" she suddenly exclaimed, following aloud the line of thought they had both been unconsciously pursuing. "You 've given me more that 's worth while to think about, Doris, in these three months, than I ever had before in all my life."
"I 'm sure it was n't I that did it," modestly disclaimed Doris, "but the books I happened to bring along and that you wanted to read. If you had n't wanted different things yourself, Sally, I don't believe you would have changed any, so the credit is all yours."
"Do you remember the day you first quoted 'The Ancient Mariner' to me?" laughed Doris. "I was so astonished I nearly tumbled out of the boat. It was the lines, 'We were the first that ever burst into that silent sea,' was n't it?"
"Yes, they are my favorite lines in it," replied Sally. "And with all the poems I 've read and learned since, I love that best, after all."
"My favorite is that part, 'The moving moon went up the sky and nowhere did abide,'" said Doris, "and I guess I love the thing as much as you do."
"And Miss Camilla," added Sally, "says her favorite in it is,
"'The selfsame moment I could pray,
And from my neck so free,
The Albatross fell off and sank
Like lead into the sea.'
She says that 's just the way she felt when we girls made that discovery about her brother's letter. Her 'Albatross' had been the supposed weight of disgrace she had been carrying about all these fifty years."
"Oh, Miss Camilla!" sighed Doris ecstatically. "What a darling she is! And what a wonderful, simply wonderful adventure we 've had, Sally. Sometimes, when I think of it, it seems too incredible to believe. It 's like something you 'd read of in a book and say it was probably exaggerated. Did I tell you that my grandfather has decided to purchase her whole collection of porcelains, and the antique jewelry, too?"
"No," answered Sally, "but Miss Camilla told me. And I know how she hates to part with them. Even I will feel a little sorry when they 're gone. I 've washed them and dusted them so often and Mss Camilla has told me so much about them. I 've even learned how to know them by the strange little marks on the back of them. And I can tell English Spode from Old Worcester, and French Faience from Vincennes Sevres, - and a lot beside. And what 's more, I 've really come to admire and appreciate them. I never supposed I would.
"Miss Camilla will miss them a lot, for she 's been so happy with them since they were restored to her. But she says they 're as useless in her life now as a museum of mummies, and she needs the money for other things."
"I suppose she will restore the main part of her house and live in it and be very happy and comfortable," remarked Doris.
"That 's just where you are entirely mistaken," answered Sally,
with unexpected animation. |