Soon the two children were on the raft, each one thrusting with a pole on the bottom of the river, which was not very deep, and so shoving themselves along. In the middle of the raft was the bag of lunch—the dried bread, pieces of cake and a very much flattened piece of pie that Bunny had found on the pantry shelf.
"Oh, this is lots of fun!" exclaimed Sue, as they floated along.
"Yep!" agreed Bunny, shoving hard on his pole. "I'm glad we came to Florida."
It was very pleasant on this part of Squaw River, where it ran through the orange groves of Mr. Halliday. On either side were growing palms and other trees, some of which met overhead in a green arch, making it very shady. Only for this the sun would have been very warm—quite different from the sun in Bellemere, where there was now snow on the ground.
"Our snow man wouldn't last very long down here, would he, Bunny?" asked Sue, as she began to feel quite warm from poling the raft.
"Nope! A snow house wouldn't either," Bunny answered. "But I like it here."
"So do I," said Sue. "There's lots of birds, too."
There were. Bunny and Sue could hear them flitting through the tree branches overhead, and could listen to their songs. Sometimes birds with brilliant feathers flashed into view, disappearing in the thick, leafy trees on either side of the river.
Bunny had made his raft rather strong and heavy, so that it floated well up out of the water. In fact, the top part was quite dry, and if the children had worn shoes and stockings they would have been perfectly safe. But Bunny knew that, sooner or later, water generally washes over the top of a raft, for one side or the other is likely to tip down. So he and Sue were barefooted. They had left their shoes and stockings on shore at the spot where they had launched the raft. It did not matter now whether the water washed over the top of their craft or not.
On and on, down the river floated the two children. For a time nothing happened. It was as calm and peaceful as even Mrs. Brown could have wished. But Bunny and Sue wanted something to happen, and pretty soon Bunny said: