“But by yourselves!” she said in horror.
“Nobody told us not,” said Jock rather defiantly; and Armine, who, with his little sister Barbara, always seemed to live where dreamland and reality bordered on each other, looked up in her face and innocently said—
“Mrs. Acton read us about the Rocky Island, and she said father and granny had brought their boats to the beautiful country, and that we ought to go after them, and there was the bright path along the sea, and I thought we would go too, and that it would be nicer if Jock went with me.”
“I knew it did not mean that,” said Jock, hanging his mischievous black head a little, as he felt her shudder; “but I thought it would be such fun to be Columbus.”
“And then? Oh! my boys, what a fearful thing! Thank God I have you here.”
“I wasn’t frightened,” said Jock, with uplifted head; “we could both row, couldn’t we, Armie? and the tide was going out, and it was so jolly; it seemed to take us just where we wanted to go, out to that great rock, you know, mother, that Bobus called the Asses’ Bridge.”
Carey knew that the current at the mouth of the river did, at high tide, carry much drift to the base of this island, and she could understand how her two boys had been floated thither. Jock went on—
“We had a boat-hook, and I pulled up to the island; I did, mother, and I made fast the boat to a little stick, and we went out to explore the island.”
“It has a crater in the top, mother, and we think it must be an instinct volcano,” said Armine, looking up sleepily.
“And there were such lots of jolly little birds,” went on Jock.