Several young people were standing on the dock near the launch as they approached. “Why, there’s Eleanor!” Suzanne exclaimed. “Where in the world did you come from, Eleanor?”
“Ann, this is our host, Dick Bell,” Maurice was saying. “This is the cousin I told you about, Dick.”
For a few moments introductions were in order. Then Eleanor had time to answer Suzanne’s question. “Mother and I are staying at Miami,” she said. “I wrote to your address, Suzanne, to let you and Ann know that we had suddenly decided to come. But you must have started before the letter reached you. We ran across Dick yesterday, down town, and he told me about this little trip. I came up on the ’bus a few minutes ago. We decided to surprise you, though Dick told the boys, I guess.”
Besides Eleanor and Richard Bell, there were two other young friends, Richard’s chum, Fred Hall, and his sister, Lois Bell. It bid fair to prove a congenial party, but it would have been thrilling enough to Ann even without the fun. It was all so different, she told Eleanor. There were tall, feathery Australian pines and cocoanut palms along the river bank. In the gardens of the homes near by, the vines and shrubs were of those varieties with which she was just becoming familiar.
“Wait till we get up toward the Everglades,” said Eleanor. “Then you will think it ‘different’.”
Ann had never heard of New River till she reached Florida. It was not like her dashing mountain rivers, but had a beauty of its own. “How dark the water is,” she said to Maurice, who sat beside her as they moved up the river, under the two drawbridges, which stood open for them and some taller boats.
“Yes. I don’t know why, unless there is something about the soil or what grows along the banks. It is a sluggish river, but the tide comes up every day to quite a distance.”
“There are some compensations for its not being rapid. I love the reflections in the water. See how that palmetto is reflected, with scarcely a ripple to show that it is water!”
The launch chugged along to the accompaniment of light laughter and conversation. Rounding the curves, they advanced up stream, passing some beautiful homes on the river front, then reaching the wilder regions, where there were tangles of beautiful trees and shrubs in the swamps. As it was yet early in the season, the water birds were not wary. Herons of all sorts flew ahead of them. A fish hawk crossed the stream overhead. An American bittern, all streaked with brown, flew close enough to be distinguished without a glass.