"I suppose it is heaven," said Sate, gravely, "because the real truly flowers, you know, God makes, and he has his things all up in heaven to work with, I guess."
"What a little goosie you are!" said Susie, curling her wise lip; "as if Jerry Mack could take us to heaven!"
However, she went at once to see about it, and was almost as much astonished to think that they were really going out in a boat, as she would have been if they were going to heaven. "I s'pose it's safe?" said Mrs. Decker doubtfully, watching the light in the little girls' eyes, and remembering how few pleasures had been offered them.
"O, yes'm," said Jerry, "as safe as the road. I could row a boat, ma'am, very well indeed, father said, when I was six years old; and you couldn't coax that clumsy old thing to tip over, if you wanted it to; and if it should, the water isn't up to my waist anywhere in the pond."
Mrs. Decker laughed, and said it sounded safe enough; and went back to her ironing, and the four happy people sailed away. If not to where the pond lilies were made, at least to where they grew in all their wild sweet beauty.
"How very strange," said Nettie, as they leaned over the great rude, flat-bottomed boat and pulled the beauties in; "how very strange that no one has gathered these for to-morrow. Why, nothing could be more lovely!"
"Well," said Jerry, "only a few people row this way, because it isn't the pleasantest part of the pond, you know, for rowing; and I guess no one has remembered that the lilies were out; there don't many people, only fishermen, go out on this pond, you know, because the boats are so ugly; and fishermen don't care for flowers, I guess. Anyhow, they haven't been here, for the buds are all on hand, just as I thought they would be by this time, when I was here on Tuesday. But I never thought of the church; so you see how little thinking is done."
Well, they gathered great loads of the beauties, and rowed home in triumph, and put the lilies in a tub of water, and sat down to consider how best to arrange them. It was curious that Mrs. Job Smith should have been the next one with an idea.
"I should think," she said, standing in the doorway of her kitchen, her hands on her sides, "I should think a great big salver of them laid around in their own leaves, would be the prettiest thing in the world."
"So it would," said Nettie, "the very thing, if we only had the salver."