“Well, I’ll say you have if you have. Where is it?”
“It’s where little girls can’t find it; but if you’ll come down this afternoon, we’ll play and I’ll beat you with it whether it’s real or not.”
“I don’t more than half believe it’s real, but I’ll come. Good-bye.”
When Ella came to see the croquet set, she thought it was quite wonderful.
“It isn’t the least bit like those in the stores,” she explained to her mother. “It is ever and ever so much nicer because it is so different. He just sawed off pieces of white birch for the mallet heads, bored a hole in each one, and drove the handle in. The bark is left on, and it’s so much prettier than paint and varnish. The ends are not much smoothed off, and so the balls do not slip half so badly.”
“And how did he make the balls?” asked the mother.
“Why, he didn’t have to make them at all. There was an old bedstead, and these balls were at the top of the posts. He just sawed them off. They’re not like common balls; they are shaped like those that boys play football with, and when you hit one, you never know which way it will go. It’s ever so much more fun than just plain croquet.”
There was always plenty of amusement for the two children, and no one ever heard them saying, “Please tell me something to do.” No one ever heard them wishing for more children to play with. Indeed, the river was as good as a dozen. They cut poles in the woods and fished in it. Ella kept a little diary, as was the fashion in those times, and it was a great convenience to be able to fill a whole day’s space with such entries as, “I caught 2 flatfish and 1 perch”; or, when apparently the fish had refused to bite on the previous day, “We did not go fishing to-day at all. I suppose I should not have caught anything if we had gone.”
The river had a charming way of suggesting things to do. In one place, clay stones had formed, and the children had fine times wading in and picking them up. In another it had overflowed and made a little bay that could easily be shut off by itself. They named it Beauty Bay, and whenever they caught a fish without harming it, they slipped it gently into this Bay to live in peace and plenty all the rest of its life.
A big flat rock in the middle of the stream was their picnic ground. Here they often built a fire and roasted eggs rolled in wet paper or ears of fresh green corn. On the bank just beyond the rock were blackberry bushes, and no one who has not tried it has any idea how good the berries taste when one takes first a berry and then a bite of maple sugar.