[CHAPTER XIV—WATER-SPRITES]
There is something about the first days of spring that stirs that most primitive instinct in every human being—the desire to move on, the nomadic impulse, the explorer sense.
Even the girls at Andrews, with heads full of friendships, coming examinations and summer plans, felt this world-old impulse. School was too small. The roads and fields that they knew so well, sweet with apple blossoms as they were, were all too tame and familiar to satisfy this longing that had made itself apparent by the time the engrossing subject of Annapolis was out of the way.
The girls yawned rudely in classes, no matter what sharp words were spoken to correct them. They even stretched their young arms out side-ways and rested them on the next chairs. They turned wistful eyes away from their books out toward the sunlight-sprinkled world and wondered what was in it beyond those immediate roofs and trees that they could see.
Finally Peggy could stand it no longer. “Well, girls,” she announced one bright Saturday afternoon when there was no more school work to consider for the day, “we’re all going hunting for the source of something—we’re going exploring. Anybody know a nice, twisty river that we can take for the work? One without too many crabs in it, because, of course, we may want to wade.”
The girls were full of enthusiasm at once. Their first thought, as usual, was what they were to take to eat. Several voted for fudge, but Peggy scornfully reminded them that this was an unheard of diet for explorers, and besides she expected to be ravenous by the time they’d walked a few miles. So a more comprehensive luncheon was planned, without the bacon this time, for they did not want to build fires, and a small, bright, quickly-running stream was decided upon for the object of their exploration. To reach this it was necessary that they take a suburban car and ride quite a distance into unfamiliar country, which was just what they had wished. Not those same old roads that they had walked to powder, not those same old rivers on the side of which every class had made its fires since the opening of the school, but a brand new part of the country where foot of Andrews girl had never trod before, to their knowledge,—this was ideal, and it added considerably to their delight that Mrs. Forest had given permission for their class to go without taking a teacher along.
They all wore white shirtwaists, white skirts, white shoes, and white linen tennis hats. They looked rather like a party of sunny angels as they boarded their car. They realized that they made a good appearance, but they were not prepared for the effect they had upon a certain motherly-looking woman who watched them file in and take their seats. She gazed at them very hard and her mouth curved into the most wistful smile the girls had ever seen, and tears came suddenly to her eyes as she glanced hastily away. The other people in the car breathed deep in sympathy. But the girls could no more have understood the vivid impression of youth and loveliness they had given than they could have deciphered the Rosetta stone. In their hearts were only the most prosaic thoughts of dainty little sandwiches and stuffed olives, with an undernote of healthy happiness and rampageous good spirits.
“What can be more beautiful than a group of young girls?” a woman was saying to her neighbor. “Aren’t they just ideal, all in white that way—those pretty girlish dresses and those white shoes and stockings—”
If she had known the girls’ most eager thought in connection with those white shoes and stockings was to throw them as far away as possible onto a rock in the river they had set out to explore, and in regard to those white dresses, their dearest wish was to fasten them up about their knees while, with all manner of joyous shouts and yells they should go wading below a waterfall.
As they approached the suburban stop where they had been advised to get off, as being near the river they were going to, they gathered up their boxes of luncheon and crowded to the door of the car, humming very softly one of their favorite school songs.