At
length and slowly, note by note, with wild lingering turns to which the
movement languished, her tone fell from its lofty jubilance to a happy
flute-like humming; she waved her arms in the mimic tenderness of
repeated and passionate farewells; then, still humming, faint and low
and sweet, tripped off again, through the glow, along the turf, into the
shadow, and out of sight; and it seemed to the beholders as if a
fountain of gladness had gushed from the sod, and, playing in the light
a moment, had run away down to join the river and the breaking sea.
Mas'r Henry called after Flor to throw her a penny; but she failed to
reappear, and he tossed it to Pluto instead, and forgot about her.
* * * * *
So, bailed out and stuffed with marsh-grass in its crazy cracks, the old
scow was afloat, the rope was cut, and by midnight it went drifting down
the river. Waist-deep in shoal water, its appropriator had dragged it
round inside the channel's ledge of rocks, with their foam and
commotion, to the somewhat more placid flow below, and now it shot away
over the smooth, slippery surface of the stream, that gave back
reflections of the starbeams like a polished mirror.
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