Then he declared it was somebody else.
Finally, when this strange fleet had been beached, Dick shouted out,
"That you, Dave Fletcher?"
"Nobody else," answered Bart's rescuer, advancing. "I have been nodding
to you, but I guess you didn't know who it was; and I don't wonder--the
way I look after my bath. Haven't got on the whole of my rig yet. How
is Dick Pray?"
The two shook hands warmly.
"I haven't seen you for some time, Dave. I have been from home a while,
going to school and so on. I am stopping at my cousin's, Sam Whittles,
just now."
"And I have been here only a few days, visiting at my uncle's, Ferguson
Berry."
"All right. We will see each other again then. I'll leave the old raft
here and come for it when the tide is going up river."
"And I am going to get the doctor. Oh no, come to think of it, these
men will get him for that little fellow's folks--the one we picked up,
you know."
"We? You, rather. You did first-rate. Well, who was that little
shaver?"
"I heard somebody call him Bartie. That's for Bartholomew, I guess."
"Oh, it's 'Mew,'" explained Dab. "Bartholo*mew*; and they say 'Mew' for
short--'Little Mew.'"
"His face looked like a kitten's there in the water," said Dick, "and he
mewed pitifully. I've heard of him. Sort of a slim thing. Well, may
sound sort of heartless, but I guess some folks would say he is hardly
worth the saving. Oh, you're off, are you?"
"Yes," said one of the two fishermen who were now pushing their boat off
from shore. "We must get to town with our fish as soon as we can."
"Well, friends, I am much obliged to you," said Dick Pray.
"So am I! so am I!" said several others.
"Count me in too," exclaimed Dave Fletcher. "Might not have been here
without you.--Give 'em three cheers, boys!"
Amid the huzzahs echoing over the waters, the fishermen, smiling and
bowing, rowed off.
"Many thanks, boys, if you will help me to turn Bart's boat over and get
the water out. I must row it up to the rock where the rest of my
clothes are, and then we might all go along together. We can pick up
the fellows on the schooner."
The remnant of Captain Dick's crew on board the schooner gladly
abandoned it when Gran'sir Trafton's boat came along, and all journeyed
in company up the river.
And where was Little Mew? He went home only to be scolded by gran'sir
because he had not brought the doctor, and because he had somehow got
into the water somewhere. Granny was not at home, and Little Mew dared
not tell the whole story. He was sent upstairs to change his clothes
and stay there till granny got home.
"Gran'sir don't know I haven't got another shift," whined Little Mew.
"Got to get these wet things off, anyhow."
He removed them and then crept into bed. It was dark when granny
returned.
From the window at the head of his bed Bartie watched the sun go down,
and then he saw the white stars come into the sky.
About that time the evening breeze began to breathe heavily; and was
that the reason why the stars, blossom-like, opened their fair, delicate
petals, even as they say the wind-flowers of spring open when the wind
begins to blow?
"They don't seem to amount to much--just like me," thought Bartie; and
having thus come into harmony with the world's opinion of himself, he
closed his eyes, like an anemone shutting its petals, and went to sleep.
Don't stars amount to much? They would be missed if, some night, people
looking up should learn that they had gone for ever.
And granny coming home, having learned elsewhere the full story of
Little Mew's exposure to an awful peril, went upstairs, and, candle in
hand, looked down on the motherless child in bed fast asleep.
"Poor little boy!" she murmured. "I should miss him if he was gone.
Yes, I should terribly."
She wiped her eyes, and then tucked up Bartie for the night.