CHAPTER IX

A LITTLE ALIEN IN THE WILDERNESS

It was too hot and clear and still that morning for the most expert of
fishermen to cast his fly with any hope of success. The broad
pale-green lily pads lay motionless on the unruffled breast of
Silverwater. Nowhere even the round ripple of a rising minnow broke
the blazing sheen of the lake. The air was so drowsy that those sparks
of concentrated energy, the dragonflies, forgot to chase their aerial
quarry and slept, blazing like amethysts, rubies and emeralds, on the
tops of the cattail rushes. Very lazily and without the slightest
reluctance, Uncle Andy ruled in his line, secured his cast, and leaned
his rod securely in a forked branch to await more favorable conditions
for his pet pastime. For the present it seemed to him that nothing
could be more delightful and more appropriate to the hour than to lie
under the thick-leaved maple at the top of the bank, and smoke and gaze
out in lotus-eating mood across the enchanted radiance of the water.
Even the Child, usually as restless as the dragonflies themselves or
those exponents of perpetual motion, the brown water skippers, was
lying on his back, quite still, and staring up with round,
contemplative blue eyes through the diaphanous green of the maple
leaves.

Though his eyes were so very wide open, it was that extreme but
ephemeral openness which a child's eyes so frequently assume just
before closing up very tight. In fact, in just about three-eights of a
minute he would have been, in all probability, sound asleep, with a
rose-pink light, sifted through his eyelids, dancing joyously over his