Now Percy had had a great dread of crossing ferries all her life; but with the example of Cousin Sarah before her eyes, she resolved at once not to be afraid, and answered promptly:
"Oh, yes, Aunt Ackerman! I shall like it very much."
"But won't it be very disagreeable getting out of the carriage down there?" asked Cousin Sarah, doubtfully. "And what shall we do when we come to the other side?"
"We shall not get out," answered Aunt Ackerman. "We shall drive on the boat at this side and off at the other. Of course you can get out, if you please; but I never do, because it is some trouble, and our horses are perfectly steady."
"Now, Julia," said Cousin Sarah, solemnly, "do you really think I am going to do such a thing as that? Suppose the boat should sink? How dreadful, to be drowned in a carriage and horses!"
Percy laughed in spite of herself.
"What would you do, if you had to cross on a raft, Cousin Sarah?" she asked. "Or in a little bark canoe, where you had to sit flat down in the bottom, and not move for fear of being upset?"
Cousin Sarah thought that under those circumstances she should immediately die.
"But dying would be as dangerous as crossing the ferry," argued Percy, gravely. Solomon, the coachman, giggled, and striving to turn the giggle into a polite cough, he choked himself; whereat Cousin Sarah remarked, in a terrified whisper, that she thought that he must be drunk or crazy, and would certainly upset the carriage or make the horses run away. She finally decided to be left at home, because she wanted to see her bundles when they came, for she couldn't help thinking, after all, that her merino must be part cotton.
"Aunt Ackerman," said Percy, very soberly, after they had gone on some little way in silence, "I never will borrow any trouble again as long as I live."