de some of the other Tideshead boys so unattractive, but Harry Foster
had a simple way of speaking and of doing whatever had to be done.

There was a group of wooden pails on the boat, and a queer apparatus for
dredging which Mr. Leicester had made the afternoon before with Seth's
and Jonathan's help. They had implored a flat-iron from Serena for one
of the weights, and she had also contributed a tin pail, which was
curiously weighted also with small pieces of iron, so that it would sink
in a particular way. It was believed that a certain uncommon little
creature would be found in the flats farther down the river, and Mr.
Leicester told the ship's company certain interesting facts about its
life and behavior which made everybody eager to join the search. "I have
been meaning to hunt for it for years," he said. "Professor Agassiz told
me about it when I was in college; but then he always roused one's
enthusiasm as no one else could, and made whatever he was interested in
seem the one thing in the world that was of very first importance."
Betty's heart glowed as she listened; she thought the same thing of
papa. "He was such an inspirer of others to do good work," said Mr.
Leicester, still thinking lovingly of his great teacher.

Sometimes the river was narrow and deep and the Starlight's course lay
near the shore, so that the children came running down to the water's
edge to see the pretty boat go by, and envy Betty and Mary Beck in the
shadow of her great white sail. Some of them shouted Hollo! and the two
girls answered again and again, until the little voices sounded small
and piping and were lost in the distance. Halfway to Riverport, where
the houses were a good way from any village, it seemed as if these old
homes had remained the same for many years; none of them had
bay-windows, and the paint was worn away by wind and weather. It was
like stepping back twenty or thirty years in the rural history. Aunt
Barbara said that everything looked almost exactly the same along one
reach of the river as it did when she could first remember it. The
shores were green with pines and ferns and gray with ledges. It was salt
water here, so that they could smell the seaweed and the woods, and
could hear the song-sparrows and the children's voices as they passed
the lonely farm-houses standing high and fog-free above the water. From
one of these they heard the sound of women's voices singing.

"They're havin' a meetin' in there, I e