"Many thanks, boys, if you will help me to turn Bart's boat over and get the water out. I must row it up to the rock where the rest of my clothes are, and then we might all go along together. We can pick up the fellows on the schooner."
The remnant of Captain Dick's crew on board the schooner gladly abandoned it when Gran'sir Trafton's boat came along, and all journeyed in company up the river.
And where was Little Mew? He went home only to be scolded by gran'sir because he had not brought the doctor, and because he had somehow got into the water somewhere. Granny was not at home, and Little Mew dared not tell the whole story. He was sent upstairs to change his clothes and stay there till granny got home.
"Gran'sir don't know I haven't got another shift," whined Little Mew. "Got to get these wet things off, anyhow."
He removed them and then crept into bed. It was dark when granny returned.
From the window at the head of his bed Bartie watched the sun go down, and then he saw the white stars come into the sky.
About that time the evening breeze began to breathe heavily; and was that the reason why the stars, blossom-like, opened their fair, delicate petals, even as they say the wind-flowers of spring open when the wind begins to blow?
"They don't seem to amount to much--just like me," thought Bartie; and having thus come into harmony with the world's opinion of himself, he closed his eyes, like an anemone shutting its petals, and went to sleep.
Don't stars amount to much? They would be missed if, some night, people looking up should learn that they had gone for ever.
And granny coming home, having learned elsewhere the full story of Little Mew's exposure to an awful peril, went upstairs, and, candle in hand, looked down on the motherless child in bed fast asleep.