No pastime was so popular at camp as canoeing. To send the light, graceful barks over the smooth waters of the lake to some favorite shadowy nook where glimpses of the mountains appeared between the waving branches of the trees, to spend an hour then with a book, or to watch the birds, or perhaps only to lie at full length on the grass and dream, and then to take up the paddles again, all this was exactly the kind of thing which appealed to every one of the girls.
“I think you might sometimes let me go with you,” said Jack one morning to her eldest sister. “You never seem to think I ever want to be with any one but Jean. Of course I am fond of Jean, but I am just as fond of you, and half the time she wants to do something I don’t want to do, so I think you might take me out in your canoe.”
“How do you know but that I shall want to do something you don’t want to do?” returned Nan.
“Well, I’d be no worse off,” maintained Jack. Nan laughed and Jack felt that her case was won, but she added, “Besides, you promised to teach me how to paddle and you never have done it. I never have a chance to paddle because the older girls always want to do it. Everybody says you are a fine paddler, Nan.”
“And you are a fine tease as well as a flatterer,” responded Nan. “All right, kitten, I’ll take you, and may I not live to regret it.”
The final clause had no effect upon Jack who, having gained her point, went off well satisfied and was waiting at the lake when her sister appeared, paddles over her shoulder and book under her arm.
“Are you going to read to me?” asked Jack.
“No, sir,” returned Nan with emphasis. “One would think you were an infant in arms. You can provide your own entertainment. I didn’t invite you on this expedition, you may remember. If I waste my energies showing you how to paddle I am fulfilling all my part of the bargain. Get in, and don’t tumble all over yourself or you will upset.”
They started off in fine style, Nan really becoming interested in giving instructions to her apt pupil who tried hard to heed her warnings of “Not that way. Don’t use your paddle like that. Don’t you see you only turn around and around and will never get on? Take care. Bear on more weight. That’s it; now,” and so on till Jack finally caught the swing and kept steadily at it in unison with Nan’s “one, two, three.”
At last the canoe swung around into a sheltered inlet where overhanging boughs fairly touched the water and a little stream emptied itself into the lake. Here Nan announced she would go ashore. “Now,” she said to Jack, “you can do anything you choose except fool with the canoe. I forbid that. You can go berrying, or fish, or study birds or do anything reasonable like that. I am going to read.” She settled herself comfortably in a small depression between the roots of a far-reaching tree and left Jack to her own devices.