Page:Her Benny - Silas K Hocking (Warne, 1890).djvu/126

102 of spirits; and the rash of water and the beat of the engine seemed to Nelly the happiest sounds she had ever heard.

Benny was rushing here and there and everywhere, and asking Joe questions about everything. But Nelly sat still. Her thoughts were too big for utterance, and her little heart was full to overflowing.

At length they reach New Ferry, where several passengers get off and several others get on; then on they glide again. The river here seems like a sheet of glass, so broad and smooth. Now they are nearing the river's bank, and Nelly is delighted to watch the trees gliding past. How wonderful everything seems! Surely her dreams are becoming a reality at last.

For awhile after they land they sit on the river's bank in the shade of the trees, and Nelly rubs her eyes and pinches herself, to be certain that she is not asleep. How grandly the mile-wide river at their feet flows downward to the sea! And what a beautiful background to the picture the wooded landscape makes that stretches away beyond Garston and Aigburth! And Nelly wonders to herself if it is possible that heaven can be more beautiful than this.

But Benny soon gets impatient to be off into the woods, and, humouring his wish, they set off up a narrow path, between banks of ferns and primroses and wild flowers of almost every hue. The tall trees wave their branches above them, and the birds whistle out their happy hearts. Here