er it Sue slipped a round
roller, which was a short piece of round tree trunk. Then when Bunny
raised up the other side of the raft his sister slipped under it
another roller.

"Now she'll slide!" cried Bunny, as he had often heard his father or
Bunker Blue say.

With his long pole Bunny now pried up on the rear of the raft. At first
it did not move, and Bunny began to be afraid he and Sue would not,
after all, have a voyage down the river.

But at last it slid a little bit, and then more and more, until finally
it was rolling along quite rapidly. As the bank sloped down to the river
like a little hill, Bunny hardly had to push or pry at all now, and a
minute later the raft was floating in the water.

It would have floated away, but Bunny had tied a rope to one edge, and
the other end of the rope he had fastened to a tree stump on shore, so
the raft was "made fast," as a sailor would say. Bunny had been around
his father's dock enough to know that when one puts a boat into the
water one must make it fast or it will be lost.

"Isn't our raft nice, Bunny?" exclaimed Sue, as she saw it floating in
the water.

"Yes," Bunny agreed, "we'll have lots of fun! Wait till I get the lunch
and we'll start."

"I want a pole so I can help push," said Sue.

"All right. You bring the bag of lunch and I'll get you a pole,"
promised Bunny.

Soon the two children were on the raft, each one thrusting with a pole
on the bottom of the river, which was not very deep, and so shoving
themselves along. In the middle of the raft was the bag of lunch--the
dried bread, pieces of cake and a very much flattened piece of pie that
Bunny had found on the pantry shelf.

"Oh, this is lots of fun!" exclaimed Sue, as they floated along.

"Yep!" agreed Bunny, shoving hard on his pole. "I'm glad we came to
Florida."

It was very pleasant on this part of Squaw River, where it ran through
the orange groves of Mr. Halliday. On either side were growing palms and
other trees, some of which met overhead in a green arch, making it very
shady. Only for this the sun would have been very warm--quite different
from the sun in Bellemere, where there was now snow on the ground.

"Our snow man wouldn't last very long down here, would he, Bunny?" asked
Sue, as she began to feel quite warm from poling the raft.

"Nope! A snow house wouldn't either," Bunny answered. "But I like it
here."

"So do I," said Sue. "There's lots of birds, too."

There were. Bun