“Not for some weeks yet, I trust. September is the most glorious of all the months on the river. When the leaves begin to turn, and the nights are so cool that you need a fire on the hearth in your cottage, and the air is so bracing that it is a delight just to breathe it, and the ducks begin to come, and you can vary your fishing with gunning, why, that’s the best time of all the year. My nearest neighbors have even stayed here all winter, once or twice.”
“It must be a wild sight here then,” suggested Jock. “When the ice is so thick you can drive over it with a horse and sleigh, and the wind sweeps down the river at the rate of sixty miles an hour, it must be great fun to be here, and feel that you’ve got a good warm snug place, and can still see it all.”
“Better to see it than feel it, I fancy,” laughed Mr. Clarke. “I enjoy the river as much as any one, but I know where to draw the line. Still, if I could bottle up some of the September air and take it back to town with me, to use when occasion demanded, I should not object.”
Miss Bessie and Ben had been taking no part in the general conversation, apparently being much more interested in one of their own.
“I want to ask you a question,” she had said to Ben, who was seated next to her.
“Say on,” responded Ben. “I’m all ears.”
“Not quite all,” replied the girl, glancing at Ben’s long form as she spoke. “But what I want to know is whether you are really going to enter the canoe races next week?”
“Why?”
“Because.”