Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/33

 "You can't hurry, on the river!" Delia shook her head.

"You've learned that already?" Mrs. Mahna asked, shrewdly. "You can cut loose and float night and day, tied to drift when the wind blows, and seems like then you just poke along and poke along! It ain't best, on Old Mississip' to hurry, specially toward the jumping-off places!"

"No, perhaps not!" Delia shook her head, absently, looking up stream. The Mississippi was on the fall, and the green Ohio River water was pouring down the east side, along the great bend. On the near side, the Mississippi water looked dull yellow, for the sun was wrong to give it the colour of flowing gold.

"You better take you time, dropping down!" Mrs. Mahna warned. "If you 'low to stay on the riveh, you had. The further down you gets, the meaner it is! I tell you that!"

"It's nothing to what I've left behind." The young woman shook her head, and Mrs. Mahna nodded with satisfaction.

"Some don't know what meanness is till they—till after they's drapped over the jumping-off place!" Mrs. Mahna suggested.

"You think I don't know?" Delia asked, level eyed and with a certain little hardness in her tone, recognized by any woman of experience.