MUSIC ON THE RIVER.

Dora looked out upon the river, smiling pleasantly, as if she had heard what Luke was saying, and dreamed over it. At last she started and answered him.

"Would you like to see the river closer? I have a canoe here—it will hold us both."

"A canoe; that is a little boat used by the Indians. But I cannot row, my hands are not strong enough."

"But I can."

"You, row a boat?"

The boy laughed, and looked at her with his bright, large eyes, evidently amused.

"You may laugh; but I can. How else did I come here?"

"From heaven, it seemed to me. If it only were so, I should be glad to go there, too! But such things are only true in dreams."

"Well, Luke, if I cannot take you quite to Paradise, we may have a nice trip up or down the river. If you doubt it, come here."

Dora went down to the bank, and, parting the bushes with her arms, revealed her pretty canoe rocking on the water.

"Come!"

She sprang into the frail craft, holding out her arms for the boy, who was by her side in an instant. Dora took up her oars, and, telling Luke to sit down in the bow, pushed into the stream, laughing merrily.

"Now," she said, "I have got you and the Cremona all to myself; let us give the birds some music. You were playing a heavenly air when I came up and frightened you so—go on with it!"

"Oh! not that!" cried the boy, taking up his instrument, "it was too sad; this must be jubilant! My heart is brimful of it. You shall just touch the water with your oars, for an accompaniment, and I——Ah! if the Cremona had the power to speak out so much happiness; but nothing can do that!"

With this Luke took up his instrument, and, stooping gently forward, began to play; not as he had done a little time before, but with an outgush of joyousness that made the heart leap as it listened. Dora, in the glow of her enthusiasm—for she loved music with a passion—dipped her oars in and out, dropping diamonds in the sunshine as an accompaniment, and, tapping her little foot on the bottom of the canoe as if impatient for a triumphal march.

Thus these two young creatures floated down stream together; Dora feeling as if a beautiful child had been intrusted to her keeping; Luke wondering in his soul if the brightest places in Paradise could be equal to that river, and if the angels who haunt them were more lovely than the fair girl whose presence had filled him with a new life!

Meantime Rhoda had taken a fancy to explore a little, and came down to the river, wondering at everything she saw on the way. If a bird started up from her feet, thus exposing its nest to full view, it all seemed like magic to her, and she would watch it, with widening eyes, circling and circling around her, then cast her eyes down upon the nest, touch the eggs cautiously, and laugh to herself that anything so pretty should be afraid of her. The green fruit, as it hung on vine or tree, was a marvel to her. She was constantly wondering if this or that was good to eat; for an honest idea of usefulness was as natural to little Rhoda as music and poetical fancies were to her brother.

At length Rhoda came upon the river's bank, and sitting down with her feet almost in the water, took a survey of the scenery. Just where she sat a fine old forest tree lifted the bank into a green knoll with its roots, which crept into the water, and gleamed through it like a knot of huge serpents. The trunk of this tree had been hollowed out and burnt in by some prairie fire, making a little cavern, from which a yard or two of rich turf sloped into the water.

"What a lovely place for washing," said thrifty Rhoda. "A fire just there, and a great brass kettle swung over it would be beautiful; plenty of water, and no end of drying room. What would some of the women in our yard say? There wouldn't be one of 'em that didn't take in washing. Oh, my! what's that?"

Up Rhoda jumped, and, shading her eyes with one hand, looked up the river, where she saw a pretty canoe cutting the water like an arrow, and in it her brother giving out the best music of his soul to the beautiful girl they had been searching for so long.

"Oh! he has found her! He has found her!" she cried, tying her bonnet eagerly, as if she must run off and tell the joyous news to some one. "Now we can stay; he will rest—he will get well. Yes, I think I will walk right across to the railroad and tell father."

But while she hesitated the canoe came opposite, curved with a graceful sweep, and drew close up to the bank. Dora had seen the little stranger, asked who she was, and called out,

"Jump in! jump in, little girl! there is room enough for us all."

Rhoda tied the last knot in her bonnet-strings with a jerk, made a jump to the lower bank, and another from that, landing in the bottom of the canoe, where she settled down still and watchful as a mouse.

"What a queer little woman it is," thought Dora, smiling under the scrutiny of those keen eyes; "his sister, yet so very unlike him. She really does not seen to care for his exquisite music."

Not she! Such music with little Rhoda was only one source of the family living; she gave just as much importance to the sound of her own smoothing-irons, or the flash of her matches. Everything that brought in money and household comfort was music to that thrifty child. You might have known that by her action in the canoe.

After examining Dora from head to foot, astonished that she was really a young lady, she discovered a pile of green grapes in the bow of the canoe, and seizing upon a bunch, held it up, and broke out in the midst of a most pathetic passage of the music.

"What are they?"

Dora shook her head, and still listening with all her soul, whispered,

"Grapes."

"Good to eat?" persisted Rhoda, crushing all the sourness out of one between her little white teeth, and making a terribly wry face over the taste.

"They should be cooked," whispered Dora again, shaking her head and striving to listen.

"Oh! stewed with sugar; I know. Just set me ashore by that vine. I'll get some for Mrs. Holt—sweet and sour together makes tremendous preserves. She'll like 'em. There! do set me ashore. I don't like this; it seems like being a baby and rocked in a cradle."

Dora was very glad to oblige the little thing, who had broken up half the charm of her brother's music. So, with a sweep of the oars, she shot her arrowy little craft to the bank, and Rhoda was soon half buried in the trailing foliage of a grape-vine, so laden with fruit that she uttered a gleeful shout on looking upward to a tree on which the vine had clambered. No wonder; a host of graceful clusters flung their delicate shadows between her and the sunshine, which came through and around them in gleams of silvery light.

"Oh! what a heap! Enough for preserves, and pies, and pickles, and everything. Father must come down and help me get at 'em. I'll just pick a few for tea, and come down again to-morrow."

Rhoda gathered a quantity of the fruit in the skirt of her dress, and scrambled out of the thicket, glorying in her prize; but she had scarcely walked a dozen yards when young Sterling came toward her, looking pale and excited. He paused a moment on seeing her, and asked quickly if she had seen Miss ——. Then, remembering that Rhoda knew no one in that place, he checked himself before the name was uttered, and looked out upon the river.

"Oh, yes!" answered Rhoda, "I have just been a rocking with her; that is, canoeing in the river. Listen, and you can hear Luke's Cremona whispering to the leaves."

"She is with some one, then."

"Yes, sir; the young lady is with my own brother, and delighted with him—no wonder."