At length a little boy, instead
of addressing his brothers and sisters, called out to his mother.
"I'll tell you what I wish, mother," cried he. "I want you and
father and grandma'm, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start
right away, and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume!"
Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of leaving a
warm bed, and dragging them from a cheerful fire, to visit the basin
of the Flume- a brook, which tumbles over the precipice, deep within
the Notch. The boy had hardly spoken when a wagon rattled along the
road, and stopped a moment before the door. It appeared to contain two
or three men, who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus
of a song, which resounded, in broken notes, between the cliffs, while
the singers hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here
for the night.
"Father," said the girl, "they are calling you by name."
But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and
was unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting
people to patronize his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door;
and the lash being soon applied, the travellers plunged into the
Notch, still singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came
back drearily from the heart of the mountain.
"There, mother!" cried the boy, again. "They'd have given us a ride
to the Flume."
Again they laughed at the child's pertinacious fancy for a night
ramble.
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