A fishing-rod had, just as a matter of ceremony, been put into the boat; but as papa held the two oars, and mamma the child, it was handed over to Lizzie, who sat in the bow. However, not a single trout offering to bite, it was laid aside, and papa’s walking-stick used instead. This was shorter, more convenient, and had a beautiful hooked handle, which could catch floating leaves. Leaves were much more easily caught than fishes, and did quite as well.
Little Sunshine goes fishing.
The little girl had now her heart’s desire. She was in a boat fishing.
“Sunny has caught a fish! Such a big fish!” cried she, in her shrillest treble of delight, every time that event happened. And it happened so often that the bench was soon quite “soppy” with wet leaves. Then she gave up the rod, and fished with her hands, mamma holding her as tight as possible, lest she should overbalance, and be turned into a fish herself. But water will wet; and mamma could not save her from getting her poor little hands all blue and cold, and her sleeves soaked through. She did not like this; but what will not we endure, even at two and three-quarters old, in pursuit of some great ambition? It was not till her hands were numbed, and her pinafore dripping, that Sunny desisted from her fishing, and then only because her attention was caught by something else even more attractive.
“What’s that, mamma? What’s that?”
“Water-lilies.”
Papa, busily engaged in watching his little girl, had let the boat drift upon a shoal of them, which covered one part of the loch like a floating island. They were so beautiful, with their leaves lying like green plates flat on the surface of the water, and their white flowers rising up here and there like ornamental cups. No wonder the child was delighted.
“Sunny wants a water-lily,” said she, catching the word, though she had never heard it before. “May Sunny have one, two water-lilies? Two water-lilies! Please, mamma?”
This was more easily promised than performed, for, in spite of papa’s skill, the boat always managed to glide either too far off, or too close to, or right on the top of the prettiest flowers; and when snatched at, they always would dive down under water, causing the boat to lurch after them in a way particularly unpleasant. At last, out of about a dozen unsuccessful attempts, papa captured two expanded flowers, and one bud, all with long stalks. They were laid along the seat of the boat, which had not capsized, nor had anybody tumbled out of it,—a thing that mamma considered rather lucky, upon the whole, and insisted on rowing away out of the region of water-lilies.