The young man, also silent, took up the oars to fit them into the rowlocks, when suddenly Molly was seen scrambling to her feet.
"Wait, Jap, wait!" she cried eagerly, and leaping over the seats, sprang lightly ashore.
"Why, what is it?" "Have you lost something?" "What can the child want?" were some of the questions showered after her from boat and beach, as she was seen to stoop and plunge a quickly bared arm into the water.
She drew it forth again, and held up something green and many-clawed.
"It's just a lobster I saw," she said calmly, as she climbed back to her place with the surprised crustacean gingerly suspended from her dripping hand. "We can boil it to-morrow, Sara, then I'll have the claws to suck; where shall we put it so't it won't grip the baby?"
The laughter called forth by this characteristic escapade effectually dispelled all tears and sadness.
Even Jasper grinned, as he handed the creature on to Morton, to be thrown into the bait-box under the stern-seat, and, amid lighter sallies and laughter, instead of tears, they rowed away. But Sara's eyes rested upon her well-loved birthplace until they had rounded the lighthouse, and the familiar scene was quite shut out by the intervening tongue of land.
It was about mid-afternoon when the little party entered the railway coach at Norcross; and this being Molly's first glimpse of a train of cars, her eyes would have put an owl's to shame for size and roundness, as she sat on the very edge of the seat, and stared uneasily about her.
Jasper, having fixed them comfortably, gave a hurried hand to each, leaving the last for Sara. He had thought a dozen times just what he would say to her at parting, but everything went out of his head in the nervousness of that last anxious moment, with the engine apparently determined to run away with all who would linger over their farewells, and he simply uttered a choked "Well, good-by, Sairay!" as he held her hand an instant in a trembling clasp.
"Good-by, Jasper, I shall not soon forget your kindness; but do hurry off before the train starts." So does the rush and rattle of modern times overpower romance and sentiment.