LUCILLA'S SHIP

"So you have come to call on me, have you?" said the lady in the tree.

"I am glad to see you, but I'm sorry that I cannot ask you to come upstairs. I am not receiving."

"He could not come up if he wanted to," said Lena; "he couldn't climb a tree like that."

"And he doesn't want to," cried the nymph of the bay-tree. "I have been up here all the morning," said she, "looking for ships, but not one have I seen."

"Isn't that a tiresome occupation?" asked Dickory.

"Not altogether," she said. "The branches up here make a very nice seat, and I nearly always bring a book with me. You will wonder how we get books, but we had a few with us when we were marooned, and since that my father has always asked for books when he has an opportunity of trading off his hides. But I have read them all over and over again, and if it were not for the ships which I expect to come here and anchor, I am afraid I should grow melancholy."

"What sort of ships do you look for?" asked Dickory, who was gazing upward with so much interest that he felt a little pain in the back of his neck, and who could not help thinking of a framed engraving which hung in his mother's little parlour, and which represented some angels composed of nothing but heads and wings. He saw no wings under the head of the charming young creature in the tree, but there was no reason which he could perceive why she should not be an angel marooned upon a West Indian island.