At this the squaw, with a word to Nakanit, held her paddle motionless, and very soon Amos was close beside them.
“Tell him,” commanded the squaw.
So Anne told her little sorry of adventure, and said, “And they are going to take me right to Rose Freeman in Brewster. Nakanit’s mother talks English.”
Amos listened in amazement. “I told Amanda you’d started for Brewster,” he responded, “and I sent word to father that I was going there, so I might as well go. I’ve got things to eat. Amanda’s sorry,” he added, looking rather shamed as he spoke his sister’s name.
The squaw now dipped her paddle again, and the canoe and boat moved forward. Anne began to think about her lost bundle, and to remember how neatly Rose Freeman dressed. “She will be ashamed of me,” thought the girl, looking down at her wet and faded skirt and bare feet.
“Say, don’t we stop anywhere for dinner?” asked Amos. “It’s getting hot work rowing all this time.”
The squaw looked at the boy sharply, and then turned the canoe toward the shore. They landed on a beach, close by the mouth of a stream of clear water. A little way from the beach they found shade under a branching oak-tree.
“I’ll build a fire,” suggested Amos, “and I’ll get some clams; shall I?” and he turned toward the squaw.
She nodded, and seemed rather surprised when she saw that the boy understood her own way of getting fire, and when he asked for a basket and soon returned with it well filled with clams, which he roasted in the hot sand under the coals, she evidently began to think well of him. Amos shared his bread and a piece of cold beef which he had brought from home with his companions, and, with a quantity of blueberries that Nakanit had gathered while Amos roasted the clams, they all had enough to eat, and Amos said everything tasted better than if eaten in the house, at which the squaw nodded and smiled.