The sun came out before the trio had gone far, but not before they had begun to forget the cloud at the start. The grass in the pastures was not quite dry yet, but wet feet were a part of the fun of the thing, Isabel said gaily. The meadow larks careened in the air about them, and the bobolinks, swinging on the thistle tops, burst into chorus from every side as the sunlight spread over the hill-side. There were robins, too, in the juniper trees beyond the white-flowering buckwheat patch, Seth pointed out, too greedy to wait till the green berries ripened. A flock of crows rose from the buckwheat as they passed and who could help smiling at Isabel’s citified imitation of their strident hawing? They came upon some strawberries, half-hidden in the tall grass beside the rail-topped wall, and Isabel would gather them in her handkerchief, to serve as dessert in their coming al fresco dinner, and Annie helped her, smiling in spite of herself at the city lady’s extravagant raptures.
When they stopped to rest, in the fresh-scented shadow of the woods, and sat on a log along the path, two wee chipmunks came out from the brake opposite and began a chirping altercation, so comical in its suggestions of human wrangling that they all laughed outright. The sound scared away the tiny rodents in a twinkling, and it banished as swiftly the restraint under which the excursion had begun.
From that moment it was all gayety, jesting, enjoyment. Isabel was the life of the party; she said the drollest things;—passed the quaintest comments,—revealed such an inexhaustable store of spirits that she lifted her companions fairly out of their serious selves. Seth found himself talking easily, freely, and even Annie now and again made little jokes, at which they all laughed merrily.
The fisherman’s judgment as to the day was honored in full measure. The fish had never bitten more sharply, the eddies had never carried the line better. It seemed so easy, to let the line wander back and forth between the two currents, to tell when the bait was grabbed underneath, and to haul out the plunging, flapping beauty, that Isabel was all eagerness to try it, and Seth rigged the little pole for her, baited the hook self-sacrificingly with his biggest worm, which he had thought of in connection with a certain sapient father of all pike further up the river, and showed her where and how to cast the line.
Alas, it was not so simple, after all, this catching of fish.
First she lost a hook on a root; then it seemed to her that ages passed in which nothing whatever happened and this was followed by the discovery that her hook had entirely been stripped of bait without her suspecting it. At last there came a bite, a deep, determined tug, which she answered with a hysterical pull, hurling through the air and into the thistles far back of her a wretched little bull-head which they were unable to find for a long time, and which miserably stung her thumb with its fin when she finally did find it.
After this exploit Annie must try, and she promptly twitched her line into the tree overhead. And so the day went forward, with light-hearted laughter and merriment, with the perfect happiness which the sunshine and color and perfume of June can bring alone to the young.
They grew a trifle more serious at dinner time. It was in the narrow defile where the great jam of logs was, and where the river went down, black and deep, under the rotting wood with a vicious gurgle. Just above the jam there was a mound, velvety now with new grass, and comfortably shaded—a notable spot for dinner and a long rest, and then the girls could watch to much advantage Seth’s fishing from the logs, of which great things were prophesied. Here then the cloth was spread on the grass, the water put on over a fire lighted back of the mound, and the contents of the basket laid in prandial array. It was in truth a meagre dinner, but were appetites ever keener or less critical?
Once during the forenoon, when allusion was made to Seth’s coming departure, Isabel had commanded that nothing be said on that subject all day long. “Let us not think of it at all,” she had said, “but just enjoy the hours as if they would never end. That is the only secret of happiness.” But now she herself traversed the forbidden line.
“How strange it will all seem to you, Seth,” she mused, as she poured out the tea. “As the time draws near, don’t you almost dread it?”