The Flirt’s white wings bore them past the dark pines on the shore, past the sea-wall of the pleasant park, and the canal which fed its little lakelets. Then on, past sandy beach and wild wood where the children picked flowers in early summer, past sloughs where adventurous boys skated in winter,—a deserted, unpromising, monotonously level bit of country, surely, to be chosen as a cynosure for the eyes of all nations; to be destined to become "the dazzling focus of a world’s activity."
Clover, as she gazed, saw only her old playground. No vision came to her of a white city, lovely and unsubstantial as though fashioned from the clouds of heaven, and holy because the offering of the best of men’s hearts and brains. No such foreshadowing came to blot out and lift her above her personal hopes and fears. She was recalled from absently viewing the landscape by Jack’s cheery voice.
"Yes, we might as well," she replied, and as she lowered her head the boom swung over.
"I hope you won’t get wet," he continued apologetically, for the spray was flying high and higher. "This wind is growing to be too much of a good thing. You must excuse my preoccupation, but I’m trying not to let you be drenched."
"Oh, never mind me," replied Clover. "You know you always said I was almost as good as a boy. I’m not going to lose my reputation on account of a few pints of water, I assure you."
"If I had only put in a reef," said Jack regretfully, "and you had your waterproof."
But the lake was growing boisterous and the facts remained that they had neither reef nor waterproof.
"I suppose we shall have to go in, but this is fine, Clover."
"Indeed it is; and does it really bring you to the conclusion that there is no place like home? I am interested, for you see I don’t know any place but home."
"Is that a fact?" Van Tassel glanced at his companion with a recollection of what his father had told him of her relinquished European trip.
"Yes, I am narrow to the last degree. I have never been out of my native State."
Jack eyed the girl with admiring compassion.
"Never,—excepting the one in Lincoln Park."
Jack laughed. "Which was carted there in wagons," he added.
"The things I’ve never done, and never seen, would fill a large volume," went on the girl, her soft hair, golden in the sunlight, blowing into a halo around her forehead, as she leaned on her elbow among the cushions; "but then I’m not sure I shouldn’t be as homesick, if I went away, as May Frisbie was last summer. Do you remember, while she was in Switzerland, she wrote home: ’For real scenery give me Illinois!’ Ah, here is some Lake Michigan!" for a dancing noisy wave had leaped above the gunwale, a few spoonfuls vaulting saucily into the girl’s lap.
