But no! She would catch it. She put out her hands and caught it easily as she might have a real toy balloon.
She looked at it closely. It was a barrel-like affair, an ancient churn.
“Not heavy at all,” she whispered.
But what was this? She was sinking, going down, down, down. She was in the lake, sinking, sinking. But that did not appear to matter. She could breathe easily. The churn was still in her hands when she reached bottom.
Fishes came to stare at her and at the churn, friendly fishes they appeared to be. They stood away and stared.
But now they were gone, scooting away in great fright. A scaly monster with big staring eyes rushed at her. She screamed, made one wild rush—then suddenly awoke to find herself sitting up in bed. She had been dreaming.
But what bed was this—what place? For one full moment she could not tell. It was all so very strange! The ceiling was low. There were two other narrow beds in the room. A large black pipe ran through the center of the room. The place was cold. She shuddered, then drew the covers over her. Then, of a sudden, she remembered. She was in a fisherman’s cottage on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. She had come there by airplane with Sandy, who was to watch men trap wild moose.
Her real airplane ride was to be a long remembered adventure. To go sailing over miles and miles of dark blue waters, then to catch sight of something very white that really was an island but which, at a distance, looked like a white frosted cake resting on a dark blue tablecloth—oh, that had given her a real thrill.
“All that was no dream,” she assured herself, “for here are my two good friends, Vivian and Violet Carlson, sleeping close by me in their own beds. And that,” she decided, “is why I dreamed of an airplane.”
But was it? And what of the barrel-churn? The churn—ah, yes, she remembered now. Vivian had shown it to her in her curiosity shop. It was closed tight, all rusted shut, and it had been picked up from the bottom of the lake in a fisherman’s net.