And they did so. The sand was clear gold down there, but as they looked a huge eel wriggled over it. Barbara shuddered, and seized her paddle once more to get away.
"It's good for me to be reminded, Uncle Bob," she said. "I forget, when I am happy, how wicked and foolish I can be when things go wrong! But oh, you can never know how unhappy I used to be! You'd have come to me if you had known, Uncle Bob!"
"Poor little girlie!" murmured Glenowen, his kind brown eyes moistening at the corners.
"But I was crazy, both naughty and crazy, and it was all my fault!" went on Barbara, resting her paddle again as the canoe skimmed fleetly out across the water, away from the sorrowful spot. "It's all so different now! And it's always going to be different!"
Glenowen smiled to himself, as he was apt to do when confronted with any of the pathetic ironies of life. Barbara would not have liked him to smile, for to her a smile meant amusement or mirth, and she could never learn to appreciate the depth of tenderness that might lurk beneath a ripple of laughter. But she was looking straight ahead. In his heart and behind his smile, Glenowen said, "Child, dear child, is it all so securely different now, and just eight days gone since you climbed out of your window before daybreak?" But aloud he said, after a silence:
"It is indeed most different, Barb, old girl? Some of your troubles are really done now, thrown into the dark corner with the discarded dollies. The others will keep bobbing up now and then, claiming old acquaintance. But just you cut them dead. They are in sober truth not the same, now that you are older and more responsible. Well I know, what so many forget, that childish sorrows, while they last, are the most bitter and hopeless of sorrows. The wall that a man steps over blots out a child's view of heaven."
"How wonderfully you understand, Uncle Bob!" cried Barbara, with ardent appreciation.
As they neared the other side of the lake, a kingfisher dropped like an azure wedge into the ripples, missed his prey, and flew off down to the outlet clattering harshly in his throat. From the deep reeds of the point above the outlet a wide-winged bird got up heavily as the canoe drew near.
"There goes my old blue heron!" shouted Barbara, gleefully. "You should have seen the way he fixed me with his glassy eyes as I passed, the morning I ran away!"
"He is very old, and very wise, and thinks of lots of things besides frogs!" said Glenowen.