Juniata Sentinel

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DICK'S BOATING.
BALLOU'S MAGAZINE.

"Boating good?"
"Excellent."
"Then I'll go!"
"Dick, you're a fool!"
"Why?"
"Why! Because you are! You're bankrupting my faith in human intelligence!"
"Am I?"
"Stupid! Don't stare at me in that way! By jingo! I'll throw the inkstand if you don't stop!"
"Ain't anything in it."
"A match for your head then."
"Anything more'n your opinion that?"
"But I'll prove it! Listen: Been here three years, haven't you? reading bad proof, and writing worse articles all night, and sleeping all day. Now you have a month off, and calmly propose spending it in a search of new ideas from old journals; just as though anybody cared whether the point of an editorial had been dulled by a century's use, or whether it had never been bright and sharp at all! You haven't seen an acre of land without a hundred houses on it, nor a female face except your landlady's and the cross-eyed waiter girls for a year; and now you propose banishing even these, and going it blind over musty files twenty hours out of the twenty-four! You'll be having your meals sent in through the keyhole next, I suppose. Brains were given for civilization, my boy, and when a fellow's actions make him a barbarian, it proves he hasn't any, that's all."

"But I said I'd go!"

"Yes; you said you'd go for the good boating, and endure the grand old farms and the society of the lady guests, for the privilege of pulling your hands raw, and getting your death or the rheumatism by upsetting those infernal club boats. You're a brute!"

"But I hate 'society,' Rob, and especially country society; and if I must dance attendance I won't go."

"Come on any terms, then, and I'll convert you. I must be off now. I shall expect you Tuesday morning on the early express. Remember!"

And so, on Tuesday morning's express Mr. Richard Hargrave, editor, rode out to Meadville station, and sat down in the rough passenger house to wait for the carriage his friend Robert Gray, gentleman farmer, had promised to send for him.

It wasn't in sight when the departure of the train left him there alone, and it wasn't in sight when an hour had passed away slowly enough. He paced the rough platform nervously, looking at his watch every three minutes, as the most stoical will do when unaccountably kept waiting.

Another hour passed, and Dick could still see no sign of his deliverance. Only a neatly-dressed young lady, with a flood of brown hair wind-blown about her shoulders, trudging towards him by the dusty road leading over the hill in the direction of the lake, was in sight.

He resolved to inquire the direction of his friend's residence and finish his journey on foot. But as she came nearer him his bashful heart began to give audible thumps of consternation, and he felt a strong inclination to run.

She was evidently a lady of culture, and a very pretty one at that, with eyes blue, bright and winning, just suited to match the hair, a clear-cut oval face, with cheeks full, without being round, delicately tinted with carmine, without being coarsely red, and a mouth sensitive and tender, which seemed now about to break into a hearty laugh as her eyes seemed for the first time to fall on Dick's anxious strides and embarrassed manner.
Surely he could not think of appearing before her in the robe of a lust city gent!
Yet he must do something.
She settled the matter at once by walking straight up to him, and asking :
"Is this Mr. Hargrave?"
"At your service, madam"
Dick tried to speak gallantly, but he colored terribly, and his voice did not sound as smooth as he could have wished.
"I am Robert Gray's sister. You may have heard him speak of Nelly?"
"A great many times."
Dick bowed awkwardly
"You must be terribly out of patience waiting so long?"
"Not at all," Dick began; then thinking that not quite the thing, he made the matter worse by saying. "Only a little tired of country scenery hereabouts— the irregularities in appointments I mean -not quite like-"
He stopped short, twirling his mustache violently, and colored to the very roots of his hair. He had evidently "put his foot in it," and half expected to see Miss Gray's blue eyes resent the insult.
"It was outrageous!" she said, as though his remark had been the most commonplace in the world; "and we were so provoked up at the house! Robert was called away on business last evening, and the only horse on the farm that I can drive sprained his ankle for the occasion, I believe, and so I had to come by way of the lake in a lumbering old sail-boat; and then, to complete my misery, the breeze went down! Isn't it a terrible list of calamities? and I fear that it is not full yet, for we must row back Can you row?"
"Oh yes; I like nothing better! We shall have quite a jolly time, after all." said Dick, wearily, inwardly pleased at the prospect of showing off his pet accomplishment. He was getting interested in the bright face and girlish figure already!

It was quite a walk over the long sandy bluff to the lake shore, and the sultry August sun, pouring down upon his head, made the jaunt anything but a pleasant one to Dick, unaccustomed
as
he was to vigorous exercise.

The sail-boat was anything but a toyish affair, and Dick found it no easy matter to get up even a moderate rate of speed with the clumsy oars. He struck out bravely, however, and succeeded in blistering his hands finely before a quarter of the three miles to Robert's landing was passed. How he prayed for a breeze!

"Shall I row now, Mr. Hargrave?"
"No indeed !' ejaculated he, just ready to faint with the sun and work, glancing first at the sober face just opposite, and then at the small shapely hands folded demurely on the prettiest of pink aprons.
"But I row a great deal with Robert, and he even praises me sometimes. Let me try, please; you are getting tired."
Dick assured her that he never felt more like rowing in his life, realizing all the time that he was growing pale from exhaustion, and pulled away lustily.

"What beautiful clear water!" he finally stopped to say, laving his blistered hands from the side of the boat, when he could row no further without resting. It would have been an excellent ruse, only he did not notice that he had stopped where a black bottom gave the water the appearance of anything but crystal.

"I really shall feel ill natured, Mr. Hargrave, if you do not let me share some of the glory of our undertaking."
Dick thought he caught a glance of both pity and merriment in Miss Nelly's eyes as she spoke, but he arose from the seat, saying :
"I submit then : but only because the penalty is so severe"
He tried to speak gayly, but it was a sad failure. He was actually dizzy, and just then his foot struck against something in the bottom of the boat, and down the poor fellow went-not into the boat, but into the lake.

He isn't positive to this day how it came about, but it is certain that when Dick came to the surface, he was helped into the boat by no less a person than Robert Gray; and it is just as certain that two boats lay rocking on the sunlit waters where only one had been before!

"I am glad to see you, old fellow." laughed his friend, as Dick stood shivering in the boat, with fountains of lake water gushing from clothes and hair.
"What on earth has Nell been doing to you? Excuse me, Dick. but it's so comical!" And Robert, holding his sides with both hands, laughed long and loudly.
"All my own awkwardness!" Dick finally stammered, not daring to look into Miss Nelly's face, yet feeling that she was laughing at him.
"I'm sure I don't know what I should have done but for you, Rob," Dick continued. "It was fortunate you were near by."
"Yes; I returned sooner than I expected, and rowed down to meet you and Nell. I came in front, and, as you were rowing, you did not see me. But we can never get home in that tub," he
went on, laughingly, pointing to the clumsy boat Dick had been rowing; "get into my boat, and I'll soon bring you home."

He was as good as his word, and poor Dick was soon selecting a dry suit from his trunk-which had somehow, notwithstanding the scarcity of horses and drivers, arrived before him.

And now comes the delicate part of my story. I don't believe in having heroes and heroines listening to improbable conversations about just what they want to know, in all sorts of outlandish places ; but then, if I leave out what Dick heard from his chamber window as he put the finishing twist to his necktie, I leave out the best part of it all, and that, you know-or ought to-won't do at all.

"And so your friend literally rowed himself into our presence, if not into our favor," he heard some one saying
"I actually heard that was all he came here for: and that we girls had such a rival in Rob's new boat club that the battle was lost already. But I really did not think that he would begin so soon!"
A burst of silvery laughter from half a dozen girlish throats followed the speech, and Dick felt his cheeks burning red as he listened to Nelly's voice.
"I say this is too bad, girls. He did splendidly rowing that old scow all loaded down with stones! I was sorry I had anything to do with it when I saw him getting so tired He was quite dizzy when he got up, and that is why he fell overboard. I really pitied him!"
"But isn't it a glorious joke?' a new voice said. "And won't it be jolly if he is utterly disgusted with rowing ? He's handsome, anyway!"
"Hush. Jessie ! he will hear you.
No, I don't think he will go rowing again right away," said Nelly.
But he did, though! And he asked Miss Nelly to go with him that very night, and many pleasant nights there after. And before long they came to be such good friends that Dick told her how he found out about the "job they put upon him." as he expressed it, and then was so ungenerous as to refuse to forgive her for her part in the effort to "disgust him with rowing." unless she would promise to let him row her through life.

"And I hope it will be without any extra weight or wettings," he said laughing.
And Nelly hoped so too, for she had told him "Yes!"