“Mother,” Ella whispered, “couldn’t I ever learn to sing like that? I’d rather do it than almost anything else in the world.”
The singing stopped and the man passed his hat around for money. Ella looked at the little singing girl and found that the singer was looking at her.
“Couldn’t I go and speak to her?” she asked, and her mother said, “Yes, if you like. I think she looks rather lonely.”
So Ella went up to the singing girl a little shyly and said:
“I think your singing is beautiful. I wish I could go about and sing and be on a boat always.”
“I heard you say to your mother that you were going to your grandmother’s, and I wished and wished that I had a grandmother and could go to see her and play like other children. I’d so much rather than to go about singing.”
But the father was beckoning to her to get ready to go ashore, and Ella went back to her mother.
“I can see him! I can see him!” she cried. “And there’s the gray horse!”
One of her uncles always met them at the Harbor. Ella had caught sight of him on the wharf, and she had no more thought just then for the singing girl.
Pretty soon they were seated in the wagon and were riding slowly along the road that wound higher and higher up among the hills to the old homestead. It was good to go slowly, Ella thought, for every mountain and every tree seemed like an old friend, and it would hurt their feelings if she hurried past them.