"You just wait, my sister, until you strike some of the rapids," admonished Clarence, his face taking on a very solemn expression, "and begin to roll about like loose apples in a cart, or find your feet hanging where your head ought to be. Then I'm no prophet if you don't completely change your form of expression."
"Oh, for shame!" cried both girls in a breath.
"I think it is real mean of you," declared Helen, "to try to spoil our enjoyment of the present by introducing into it the suggestion of those terrible things that await us. As for myself, I believe in enjoying what is sweet and good while we have it, without borrowing trouble with reference to what is in the future."
"A philosophy in which I heartily agree," said Dorothy.
There was indeed much to make the trip delightful, for the beauties of the spring were all around them, in the sky, in the water, in the green knolls overhanging the river. The stream continued to be quite shallow. At some places it gurgled over the rocks only a foot or so below the sampan. They came now and then to where the cattle waded knee deep in the lush grasses. These turned to view them in mild-eyed astonishment as they passed by chatting and laughing, then went on with their grazing. Flocks of mandarin ducks and wild geese flew by; some of the latter even swam close to the sampan. There were too, numbers of the imperial crane, and once in a while a pink ibis wading along the edge of a rice field.
Clarence took his gun to shoot one of these, but Helen and Dorothy began to beg for its life. "We don't want to eat it, so why destroy it?" asked Helen.
"Oh, wouldn't you girls like a wing each for your hats?" asked Clarence a little mischievously.
"Oh, no indeed," declared Dorothy. "No bird wing for me! You know that well enough, Master Clarence," and she looked at him reprovingly.
"Well, the truth is," confessed Clarence, "I want it for my cabinet. I know a young Japanese in Seoul who has promised to show me how to stuff all I bring back. In the meantime he has taught me how to preserve them while on the trip."
"If you must do it then in—in the cause of science," and here Helen looked at him quizzingly, "wait until we can't see you commit the murder, won't you?"