The light Gaspé canoe sped away up stream close to the shores, with Archibald Lyndsay and Rose. They were contentedly quiet for an hour or more, and at last left behind them the island camp and its white tents, and then the last of the clearings and the lower alluvial meadows with their richly feathered elms. As they went on, the hills were more abrupt and closer to the river, or precipitous past the power of the hardiest pines to find more than here and there a foothold.
And now Lyndsay laughed, and Rose, curious, inquired why.
“I was thinking of the boys”; and he told her of the hornets’ nest.
“I don’t think the dear mother will like it,” said Rose.
“Perhaps,—oh, assuredly not; but what on earth can one do with three young steam-engines?”
“It’s very, very dreadful, papa, and do not tell; but I would like to be present at the siege of the hornets’ nest. It must be awfully good fun.”
“What was that you said?”
“I said awfully good fun. And also I desire to add that this is my day, and I shall say what I please, do what I please, talk slang and bad grammar by the yard if I want to.”
“As you like,—I make but one condition: there is to be none of that wading into deep waters of which you and Anne are so fond. I get enough of that at home, in my work. This is to be a tree-and-water day. I want to push on first up to the burnt lands. Some twenty years ago the upper country was burned off, so that, between the hills and the river are long abrupt slopes with low underbrush and millions of dead trees. The tops of the hills are also covered with the same mighty stubble.”