A Sweet Little Maid

by Amy Ella Blanchard

"I'm going to try to get the boat out where it will float. It's such fun to have it bob up and down," replied the girl addressed. She had a long pole and was pushing the boat off from the shore. It was fastened to a stake, so it could only career around a little, and Dimple's friend Callie Spear assured the little girls that it was perfectly secure, and so they gave themselves up to their enjoyment.

Both Florence and Dimple felt very proud of being invited to join this company of older girls; and, while the latter amused themselves by fishing, the two little ones set afloat small chips, freighted with the daisies they had gathered, and wondered how far they could go before they should upset.

"Wouldn't it be funny if they sailed all the way to the ocean and were seen by the people on one of the big steamers. They would wonder how in the world the daisy people got out so far." Florence said this as she was watching a chip rapidly drifting down stream. Suddenly she became aware that the shore was further away than she supposed, and she cried, "Oh, how wide the water is! See how far it is to the shore."

The other girls looked up, startled, and to their dismay discovered that their boat had slipped its moorings and was fast drifting down the river, nearer and nearer to the current of midstream. They looked at each other with scared faces, but they did not want to alarm the little girls, and so Callie said, with a forced laugh: "Oh, that's all right. We'll get in easily enough. Some one will see us from the shore, or a boat will come along that can tow us in. It's rather fun to have a little adventure." However, she eagerly scanned the shore and the water; but no help seemed to be near, and the boat was drifting on and on.

Dimple realized that they were moving further and further away from home, as she saw the objects on the shore grow smaller and smaller. The big tears began to gather in her eyes.

"Don't cry, dear," said Callie, soothingly. "We'll get home all right."

"But suppose we shouldn't. Suppose we should drift on and on down to where the steamboats come up, and we should keep going till it got dark, and nobody should see us, and we should get run into and drowned. Oh dear! I want my mamma, and my papa."

Florence took alarm at this, and, putting her head in Dimple's lap, began to cry too.

The older girls were scarcely less frightened, for they knew there was a danger in their reaching the rapids, and in being whirled around between the rocks, when they would be very likely to upset, even in a boat like the one in which they were. They managed, however, to show less fear, in their endeavor to calm the younger children.

"Why, we'll get home long before we reach the steamboats," said Emma Bradford, cheerfully. "Haven't you seen the river in a freshet? and don't you know how it carries all sorts of things along? haystacks, and sheds, and even houses with people in them, I've seen, and they are always rescued."