“Down the river.”
“Maybe he knows where Daddy Jake is,” said Lillian. “Ask him.”
“Why, he wouldn’t know Daddy Jake from a side of sole leather,” exclaimed Lucien.
By this time the boat had drifted around a bend in the river. The man on the bank took off his hat with his thumb and forefinger, rubbed his head with the other fingers, drove away a swarm of mosquitoes, and muttered, “Well, I’ll be switched!” Then he went on with his fishing.
Meanwhile the boat drifted steadily with the current. Sometimes it seemed to the children that the boat stood still, while the banks, the trees, and the fields moved by them like a double panorama. Queer-looking little birds peeped at them from the bushes; fox-squirrels chattered at them from the trees; green frogs greeted them by plunging into the water with a squeak; turtles slid noiselessly off the banks at their approach; a red fox that had come to the river to drink disappeared like a shadow before the sun; and once a great white crane rose in the air, flapping his wings heavily.
Altogether it was a very jolly journey, but after a while Lillian began to get restless.
“Do you reckon Daddy Jake will be in the river when we find him?” she asked.
Lucien himself was becoming somewhat tired, but he was resolved to go right on. Indeed, he could not do otherwise.
“Why, who ever heard of such a thing?” he exclaimed. “What would Daddy Jake be doing in the water?”
“Well, how are we’s to find him?”