Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/237

Rh any mishap to her daughter; for the young girl was the fortunate possessor of strong arms and a cool head. Fritz was not quite as fond of the water as Amy, and during  the early part of the present summer she had seldom  gone out in the boat.

But on this particular day, she knew that the exercise would do her good, and indeed when she felt herself gliding  over the water, her light-heartedness returned to her, and  she bent to the oars, and pulled toward a distant point  where she meant to land for a little while. When the point was reached, Amy managed to pull her boat to just  the right spot on the little beach where, by measuring the  distance carefully with her eye, she could step ashore to  a rock. There was an iron staple in the rock, which had evidently been used for mooring purposes for a long  time; Amy fastened her rope to the staple, saw that the  boat was in water enough to float it, and then, stepping  from this rock to another nearer the land, and then to  another, clambered up the side of the cliff which made the  extremity of the point. There she sat down, in a sheltered nook which she and Fritz had discovered long before, and  began to read. Her book was absorbing,—indeed did any boy or girl of fifteen fail to find “Off the Skelligs” absorbing?—and she sat there for more than an hour,—no, for  more than two hours, regardless of time. At length she judged by the number of pages that she had covered, that  she had been there longer than she had intended to be. But what was her surprise, in looking down toward the beach, to find that she had made an absurd mistake. The