d looked at us. Then they drew their chairs closer together, and
turned their backs to us. What they thought, we never knew; but Corny
declared to me afterward that they talked no more French,--at least when
she was about.

The gentleman who had been the subject of Corny's French discourse
called her over to him, and the four had a gay talk together. I heard
Corny tell them that she never could pronounce French in the French way.
She pronounced it just as it was spelt, and her father said that ought
to be the rule with every language. She had never had a regular teacher;
but if people laughed so much at the way she talked, perhaps her father
ought to get her one.

I liked Corny better the more I knew of her. It was easy to see that she
had taught herself all that she knew. Her mother held her back a good
deal, no doubt; but her father seemed more like a boy-companion than
anything else, and if Corny hadn't been a very smart girl, she would
have been a pretty bad kind of a girl by this time. But she wasn't
anything of the sort, although she did do and say everything that came
into her head to say or do. Rectus did not agree with me about Corny. He
didn't like her.

When it grew dark, I thought we should stop somewhere for the night, for
it was hard enough for the boat to twist and squeeze herself along the
river in broad daylight. She bumped against big trees that stood on the
edge of the stream, and swashed through bushes that stuck out too far
from the banks; but she was built for bumping and scratching, and
didn't mind it. Sometimes she would turn around a corner and make a
short cut through a whole plantation of lily-pads and spatterdocks,--or
things like them,--and she would scrape over a sunken log as easily as a
wagon-wheel rolls over a stone. She drew only two feet of water, and was
flat-bottomed. When she made a very short turn, the men had to push her
stern around with poles. Indeed, there was a man with a pole at the bow
a good deal of the time, and sometimes he had more pushing off to do
than he could manage by himself.

When Mr. Chipperton saw what tight places we had to squeeze through, he
admitted that it was quite proper not to try to bring the big
steam-boats up here.

But the boat didn't stop. She kept right on. She had to go a hundred and
forty miles up that narrow river, and if she made the whole trip from
Pilatka and back in two days, she had no time to lose. So, when it was
dark, a big iron bo