Aunt Nancy appeared to
be much pleased with the plan for the afternoon, and announced that
she had asked some of the young people to come to drink tea the next
evening, while she greeted Nan so kindly that the home-coming was
particularly pleasant. As for the captain, he was unmistakably happy,
and went off down the street with a gentle, rolling gait, and a smile
upon his face that fairly matched the June weather, though he was more
than an hour late for the little refreshment with which he and certain
dignified associates commonly provided themselves at eleven o'clock in
the forenoon. Life was as regular ashore as on board ship with these
idle mariners of high degree. There was no definite business among
them except that of occasionally settling an estate, and the forming
of decided opinions upon important questions of the past and future.
The shadows had begun to grow long when the merry company of young
people went up river with the tide, and Nan thought she had seldom
known such a pleasure away from her own home. She begged for the
oars, and kept stroke with George Gerry, pulling so well that they
quickly passed the other boat. Mary Parish and the friend who made the
fourth of that division of the party sat in the stern and steered with
fine dexterity, and the two boats kept near each other, so that Nan
soon lost all feeling of strangeness, and shared in the good
comradeship to which she had been willingly admitted. It was some time
since she had been on the water before, and she thought more than once
of her paddling about the river in her childhood, and even regaled the
company once with a most amusing mishap, at the remembrance of which
she had been forced to laugh outright.
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