however, Barbara stepped up the bank to a thicket of Indian willow, and proceeded, by dint of carefully calculated lifting and pulling, to drag forth from its hiding-place a ruddy canoe of birch-bark, the dog's spirits and his flaunting tail fell together. If Barbara's venture was to be in the canoe, he knew he should have no part in it; and his big, doggish heart was dejected. With his tongue hanging from his jaws, he sat up on his brindled haunches and looked on, while slowly and laboriously Barbara worked the frail craft down to the water. When it was afloat, and the resined prow pulled up into a tuft of weeds to keep it from drifting away, Barbara fetched two paddles from the same hiding-place. In the bow of the canoe she stowed her bundle and her basket. In the stern she arranged a pile of ferns as a cushion for her knees. Once more she flung her arms around Keep's massive neck, kissed his silky ears, wept violently for the smallest fraction of a minute; and then, stepping into the canoe with the light precision of one skilled with the birch-bark, she pushed off, and with quick, vigorous strokes headed straight across the lake. The dog ran uneasily up and down the water's edge, whining and fretting after her. When she was a little way out he made a sudden resolution, plunged into the water, and swam eagerly after the fugitive. But Barbara heard the splash, and understood. She realised that he would surely upset the canoe in trying to get into it, and this was the time when she must seem hard, however her heart was melting. She looked back over her shoulder.
"Go home, Keep! Go home!" she commanded.
The dog turned obediently and made for shore. And Barbara, her lips set and the big tears rolling down her cheeks, continued her journey out across the lake.
CHAPTER II
It was now clear day. The ample spaces of blue between the thin clouds overhead grew pure, as if new bathed. The sun was not yet visible over the woods, but sent level shafts of radiance through the sparser leafage. Barbara's face was westward, and her prow, as the nervous cunning of her paddle urged it forward, threw off the water on either side in long, polished, fluted furrows, dazzlingly bright at the top of the curve and steel-dark in the depression. Child as she was, and of a fairy slightness, Barbara's wrists were strong and she was master of her paddle. Her tears presently dried themselves as she noted with exultation, by the growing depth and abruptness of these furrows from her prow, that she was making a speed that did credit to her canoe-craft. In a few minutes her parting pangs were all forgotten, and she was absorbed in racing, as it were, against herself. She knelt low, working her shoulders freely like a squaw, and bent every energy to making the passage of the open before a wind out of the morning should awake to hinder her progress.
A low, green point, deep-plumed with sedge, thrust out from the nearing shore to meet her. At its tip, motionless, and eloquent of ancient mystery, poised the dream-like shape of a blue heron. Nearer and nearer slipped the canoe, till Barbara could discern the round, unwinking jewel of the great bird's eye, watching her inscrutably. Then, with leisurely spread of spacious wings, it rose and flapped away, to renew its not wholly disinterested contemplations in a further reed-bed.
Behind the point of sedges Barbara swept the canoe on a fine curve, and into the channel of a little river, the quiet outlet of the lake. Alders, osiers, and thick-starred draperies of clematis came down over either bank. The stream was not twenty paces wide, and its deep current was so gentle that the long weeds on the bottom were hardly under compulsion to show which way it flowed.
The ancient wood at this place gave back several hundred yards from the lake, save for scattered outposts and thickets. Rounding the first curve of the stream, – which, indeed, seemed all curves in its reluctance to forsake the parent water, – the canoe ran into a flock of gray-and-white geese dabbling along the weedy margin. The birds were not alarmed, but they lifted their heads and clamoured a sonorous warning; and straightway from behind the screen of leafage came a quacking of ducks, a cackling of hens, and the excited barking of a puppy. Then a cock crowed shrilly. The stream rounded to a wider stretch, and its western bank, flooded with sunshine, showed a grassy clearing of perhaps two acres in extent, at the back of which, close against the primeval trees, huddled a low, gray cabin, with wide eaves and a red door. A hop-vine covered one end of the cabin and sprawled over the roof. Along the base ran a "banking" about two feet high, of rough boards with the bark on, supported by stakes and filled in with earth – a protection to the cellar against winter frosts. Leaned up to the sun, along the banking, stood wooden tubs and an iron pot; and on a bench beside the door another tub. In front of the door was a space of chips, littered with axe, buck-saw, feed-troughs, parts of a broken hand-sled, a large wicker basket with the bottom gone, and indeterminate waifs and strays of human use. From this space of débris a foot-path ran down through short grass to the waterside, where a clumsy punt was hauled up. The place was alive with ducks and chickens; and as Barbara came in view a stately turkey-cock swelled, strutted, and gobbled defiance to her intrusion.
Sitting on the door-step in the sun was a sturdy old woman in greenish homespun petticoat and bodice, with a dull red kerchief crossed upon her shoulders and a cap of greenish-yellow linen on her head, – the soft dye of the "yaller-weed" juice. She was busy cutting coloured rags into strips for mat-hooking. At her side sat a small yellow puppy, with head cocked and one ear alertly lifted, curious but doubtful as to the visitor.
Barbara turned her birchen prow to the landing-place, and ran it gently ashore in the soft mud beside the punt. At the same moment Mrs. Deborah Blue – known to Barbara and to all the village of Second Westings as 'old Debby' – dropped her knitting on the stoop, snatched up a stout stick that leaned against the door-post, and hobbled with a heavy briskness down the path to meet the visitor. The yellow pup frisked interestedly at her heels.
Barbara had indeed run her prow ashore, but that was for the sake of stability merely. She was in haste, and had no idea of stopping now to indulge her inclination for a gossip with old Debby. She rested in silence, one brown hand on the gunwale of the punt, her full, young, wilful lips very scarlet, her gray-green eyes asparkle with mystery and excitement, as the old woman hobbled down to greet her.
"Ain't ye comin' in to set awhile, an' eat a cooky, Miss Barby?" inquired Mrs. Blue, wondering at the child's inscrutable look. The old dame's face was red and harsh and strongly lined. Her chin was square and thrust forward aggressively, with a gray-bristled wart at one side of its obtrusive vigour. A lean and iron-gray wisp of hair, escaped from under her hat, straggled down upon her red neck. But her shrewd, hard, pale-blue, dauntless old eyes beamed upon the child with unfeigned welcome. She spoke a little wheezingly, being out of breath from haste; and Barbara was the only soul in all the township of Second Westings for whom old Debby would condescend to hasten.
"No, Debby dear, I can't stop one minute. I'm not coming ashore. I'm running away from Aunt Hitty, and I'm going down the river to Uncle Bob. I just stopped to say good-bye to you, you old dear, and to ask you to take this letter for me to Aunt Hitty. I didn't dare to leave it in my room, for fear she'd find it and know where I'd gone, and send after me before I'd got a good start. I don't like Aunt Hitty, you know, Debby, but she's been good to me in her way, and I don't want her to be worrying!" She held out a folded paper for the old dame to take; but she held it tentatively, as if she did not want to surrender it at once.
Knowing Barbara as no one else in the township of Second Westings knew her, old Debby betrayed neither surprise nor disapproval. She nodded several times, as if running away were the most reasonable, and indeed the most ordinary, thing in the world for a little girl of fourteen years to do when she found aunts and environments uncongenial. Old Debby's smile, at this moment, had just the right degree of sympathy. Had ever so little of amusement glimmered through its weather-beaten creases, she knew that the sensitive and wilful girl before her would have been off in a second with her venture all unexplained.
"I'd take it fer ye, my sweeting, ef I'd got to crawl on my knees all the way 'round the lake," the old dame answered promptly; but at the same time, scheming to prolong the interview, and knowing that if once Barbara started off again there would be no such thing as luring her back, she kept both hands clasped on top of her stick and made no move to accept the missive.
