HEARTSEASE AND DAISY—THE PLAYMATES. 
31 
^ T was a warm, sunny afternoon, and her aunt had 
C i tied a sun-bonnet on her little Mara, and turned 
the two children loose upon the beach to pick shells. 
All was serene, and quiet, and retired, and no possible 
danger could be apprehended. So up and down they 
trotted, till the spirit of adventure, which ever burned 
in the breast of the boy, led him towards a small canoe 
which had been moored just under the shadow of 
a cedar-covered rock. At once he persuaded his little 
neighbour to go into it, and for a while they made 
themselves very gay, rocking from side to side. 
. The tide was going out, and each retreating wave 
washed the boat up and down, till it came into the boy’s head how 
beautiful it would be to sail out as he had seen men do; and so, with 
earnest tugging of his little brown hands, the boat was at last loosed from 
her moorings, and pushed out into the tide, and then the children laughed 
to find themselves swinging and balancing on the surface of the water, 
and watching the sparkles of the sunshine and the white pebbles below. 
And then the tide-waves danced them out and still outward, and as 
they went further and further from shore the more glorious felt the boy. 
He had got Mara all to himself, and was going away with her. Then the 
sea-gulls came flying toward the children, and they stretched their little 
arms in welcome, nothing doubting but these fair creatures were coming 
at once to take passage with them for Fairyland. And thus the children 
were all excitement at the way in which their little bark danced and 
rocked, as it floated out wal'd to the broad, open ocean, at the blue, 
freshening waves, at the pretty gulls, and at the vague expectations of 
going rapidly somewhere, to something more beautiful still. 
Mrs. Stowe. 
