“To be sure we might,” said Elfie; “and even if we should be late in returning, there will be moonlight to come home by. It will be perfectly delightful.”
“And we have everything along to make us comfortable,” said Allison.
In fact, when the extension of their expedition was once fairly and broadly proposed and discussed, it was unanimously agreed upon.
And it was decided that they should immediately start for the upper river, should stop and dine at the Point of Rocks, and then return home by moonlight.
To be sure Elfie felt a few twinges of conscience when she thought how great would be Erminie’s anxiety at her prolonged absence, but Elfie, with a mental jerk, exclaimed to herself:
“Bother! if she shouldn’t be worrying about me, she would be worrying about somebody else—some dying soldier in the hospital, some starving refugee from the South, or some condemned criminal in his cell. It’s all the same to her.”
And so the picnickers bade adieu to their new friend, the commander of the block-house, and their boat steamed away up the canal for the Point of Rocks.
Above the Falls the scenery was much finer than it was below. The river was narrower, and higher; and the huge frowning precipices on each shore darker and loftier.
The company, with their lately exuberant spirits somewhat toned down by the fatigues of the day, no longer sang jubilant Union songs with uproarious choruses; but sat silently enjoying the beauty of the scene, or quietly conversing with each other, or listening to Mr. Billingcoo, who, with his guitar in his hands and his eyes turned up, reclined on the deck and sung lispingly to his own accompaniment one of Thomas Moore’s sentimental songs:
“Row gently here, my gondolier,