Is like the dew-drop on the Rose;
When next the summer breeze pass by,
And wafts the bush, the flower is dry;”
so in a few moments, the three children were having a merry game of Fort-siege, pelting down with their fatal pea-shot, the brave little soldiers who never winced or offered to run away.
Nannette has returned, with Aunt Emma’s permission, for the children to spend the morning, which was hailed with great delight, for sieging forts is the work of time, and the young folk thought they could well afford to lose their Croquet and garden sports, to capture such booty as the fort promised.
Three o’clock did come that afternoon, though there seemed to be every reason to suppose it never would, for the hands of Aunt Emma’s tall, old-fashioned clock, which stood in the upper hall, seemed to have grown, suddenly, stiff and rheumatic; the “here she goes, and there she goes,” of the old pendulum, were, surely, never before so deliberate, and as for the old moon-face above the dial, it seemed to take such pleasure in the children’s impatience, that Artie fairly forgot his reverence for old Father Time’s faithful servant, and shook his fist at it, and was just about to assist the old pendulum to take a higher flight, when the barn-yard mischief and Papa’s stern face came to mind, and he turned away for a slide down the bannisters instead, when he remembered Mamma had forbidden that, so the boy sat down on the stair landing, leaned his elbow on his knee, his cheek on his hand, and tried hard to think—
“Whatever under the sun there was a boy could safely do?” and the only thing seemed to be “to behave!”
As we have said before, three o’clock did come at last, and found Charlotte and Harry in the ladies’ saloon, Papa on the upper deck, holding Jack on his knee, watching the rest of the party, under Nan’s protection, at the side of the boat, holding on with both hands to their hats, which the stiff sea-breeze seemed coaxing away very hard. Whatever sea-breezes want of straw hats is a mystery to us. The saucy fellows don’t stop for small boys’ hats alone, but Narragansett sailors do tell of a party of grave and learned clergymen coming from a Newport meeting, how the careless, saucy sea-breezes teased those reverend gentlemen, and at last, when fairly out of port, the boldest of them helped himself to the Bishop’s hat, and then ran off to “blow” about it. What that Bishop did, History doesn’t say; whether he made a soldier-cap of his Providence Journal, or a night-cap of his pocket-handkerchief, we cannot confidently say; but, you may rest assured, he made the best of it.
Charlie Leonard, as the most experienced sailor of the party, is explaining to them the nature of the foaming water about them.