Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/314

 tion; and he would forget the futile verses in a wordless reverie upon that great, changing, musical, living poem spread out before his chamber windows, whispering to his tiny boat, drawing his thoughts away, far beyond the thought of the vast sea itself, out and beyond, where imagination grew dim in horizons that no ship has ever neared. And so it will be seen that Uncle Bobby, in spite of his imperfect equipment, was a poet—was a poet to-day even, as he sat with his pipe between his lips, drifting with the tide up into the heart of the marshes.

A small cat-boat went tacking across his stern. Uncle Bobby left his oars to the care of the patent row-locks, and their blades touched the water, sending up a little shower of jewels on either side.

"AhAh, [sic] there!" cried Uncle Bobby, taking his pipe from his lips.

"Ah, there, Uncle Bobby!"

"Bound for Great Isle?"

"Ay, ay?"

The cat-boat slipped slowly away on a new tack, and Uncle Bobby, much refreshed by the encounter, proceeded to knock out the dead ashes against the boat-side and stow the pipe away for later service. Then he took to his oars and rowed in a leisurely manner up the stream. He looked about from time to time with the quick eye of the sportsman, but the gun at his feet was really there more for the sake of company than for anything else. It was not the time of day for