“Just the same,” he muttered half aloud, with a glance at the sky, “the blue’s on top!”
“Eh?” asked Harry sleepily.
To the left, over on the links, seven couples dotted the turf. Golf enthusiasts these, so intent on following the little white spheres that they had no thought for the temperature. Further along was the field, sprinkled with the blue-and-gray-uniformed ball players. Occasionally, when the breeze died away, the sharp crack of ball against bat reached the occupants of the canoe. Presently the mouth of the tiny stream which wound inward to Marsh Lake was reached, and the lads took up their paddles again to battle with the sluggish current. The canoe was headed in between the tall rushes, which in places almost met across the little passage, and all their ingenuity was required to keep their shallow craft from running aground on the bars and flats. It was very hot in here, and swarms of blood-thirsty mosquitoes were lying in wait for the adventurers.
“Who suggested coming in here?” asked Gerald, pausing in his paddling to defend himself from the hungry horde.
“You did,” responded Harry. “Don’t you wish you hadn’t? I’m just a mass of bites already.”
“Well, let’s get out of it,” said Gerald.
“Let’s keep on; it’s only a little ways more.”
Another turn of the winding stream and the bushes gave way and the canoe floated on Marsh Lake, a good-sized sheet of water, set in a wide, green sea of marsh grass and rushes, which extended for a good half-mile to the westward, and perhaps half that distance north and south. Now and then a clump of low bushes or a group of small willows stood up above the surrounding flatness. Blackbirds and bobolinks and sparrows held high carnival amidst the swaying reeds, frogs splashed and challenged gruffly, and the hum of thousands of insects filled the air. Into and out of the lake dozens of little streams made their way, all so much alike that it was the custom to thrust a paddle into the bank as one entered, so as to distinguish the outlet toward the river from the other streams which meandered in meaningless fashion across the marsh, twisting and doubling, and, in many cases, leading nowhere at all. So Harry stuck his paddle down into the mud at the bottom of the lake, near the margin, and left Gerald to propel the craft across the unruffled water.
They went very quietly, for sometimes there were adventures awaiting the visitor to Marsh Lake. It was a favorite place for ducks and loons and snipe, and more than one heron had been surprised there. But to-day they discovered nothing more remarkable than two big mud turtles, which slipped into the water from the log upon which they had been sunning themselves. A pair of kingfishers came winging across the marsh, looking for supper, but the first glimpse of the canoe sent them wheeling northward, scolding discordantly. Gerald paddled slowly around the lake, fighting off the mosquitoes, which, if less troublesome here than in the stream, were still annoying.
“Let’s go back,” he said finally. “There’s nothing here to-day. Sometime I’m coming up here to catch a turtle.”