japanned ware, which had been worn out and thrown aside, and was now
good for nothing; and yet it was whole, and Mary Anna thought it would
make a good boat. As, however, it was not shaped like a boat, she
thought she would call it a Chinese junk, which is a clumsy kind of
vessel, built by the Chinese. Accordingly after the boys had gone to
bed, she got all her materials together; the old bread-tray for the hull
of the junk, some fine twine for the rigging, David's mast and step, and
a piece of birch bark, which she thought would represent very well the
mats of which the Chinese make their sails. She carried all those things
to her room, so as to have them all ready for her to go to work upon the
vessel very early the next morning.

And early the next morning she did get to work. On the whole, the craft,
when finished, if it was not built exactly after the model of a real
Chinese junk, would sail about as well, and was as gay. She got it all
done before breakfast, and carried it down, and hid it under some bushes
near the mole.

Then, after breakfast, she took the boys all down, and told Caleb that
she was ready to make him an offer for his squirrel. She then went to
the bushes, and taking out the junk, she went to the mole, and carrying
it out to the end, she gently set it down into the water. The boys
looked on in great delight, as the junk wheeled slowly around in the
great circles of the whirlpool.

Caleb hesitated a good deal before he finally decided to give Mary Anna
his squirrel, and he tried to stipulate with her, that is, make her
agree, that she would not let him go; but Mary Anna would not make any
such agreement. She said that if she had the little fellow at all, she
must have him for her own, without any condition whatever; and Caleb, at
length, finding the elegance of the Chinese junk irresistible, decided
to make the trade.

And now for Marianna's plan. She liked to see the squirrel very much;
she admired his graceful movements, his beautiful grey colour, and his
bushy tail, curled over his back, like a plume. But then she did not
like to have him a prisoner. She knew that he must love a life of
freedom,--rambling among the trees, climbing up to the topmost branches,
and leaping from limb to limb; and it was painful to her to think of his
being shut up in a cage. And yet she did not like to let him go, for
then she knew that in all probability he would run off to the woods, and
she would see him no