Free Houseboat Girl by Lois Lenski Page A

“These kids holding up the ferryboat?”
    “They’re after a dog,” said the ferry man. “Guess we’ll have to wait.”
    Patsy and Dan had rushed to the front of the ferry, ducking around the crowded cars and peeking inside each one.
    “Where is he? Oh, where is Blackie?” cried Patsy.
    “Are you children looking for a black dog?” asked a strange lady. “There’s one up front.”
    “Blackie, oh Blackie!” cried Patsy.
    It took only a minute to find him. There was Blackie on the deck in front, looking off into space, quite unconcerned. He was all set for a voyage across the river. He turned his head when he heard his name called.
    “Blackie!” cried Patsy. “What you doin’ here?”
    “Where do you think you’re goin’?” asked Dan behind her.
    Patsy picked the dog up and she and Dan rushed back. The ferry man held the chain up until they dashed through.

    “You found your dog, I see!” he said.
    The man passenger laughed. “Now the kids are happy. They’ve got their pet back again.”
    Patsy and Dan watched the ferry pull away. Then Patsy looked down at the dog in her arms.
    “Where were you going, Blackie?” she asked tenderly. “Were you going away and leave us?”
    “He wasn’t going away,” said Dan. “He just got mixed up. He thought he was on the houseboat going down river.”
    “We’ll have to watch him better after this,” said Patsy.
    There was great rejoicing in the Foster family when Blackie was brought back and the story told. They all laughed about Blackie wanting to take a ride on the ferryboat.
    In the morning, they were off again.
    Patsy thought now and then about her old home in a real house in River City, Illinois. The two short years of her life spent there now seemed like a dream. Even the memory of her best friends there was fading. She never talked about Ginny Cobb or the Cramer girls any more. She never mentioned Pushcart Aggie or Janey Miller, and her pearl. All that was buried deep in the short past of her childhood. The experiences of now and the present were so rich, she was not reminded of what had gone before.
    Now her life was the river, the great Mississippi River which had claimed the souls of so many people before her, people of all kinds, all ages and stations. The river was a mighty force that challenged human beings and dared them to meet that challenge. All her life now was bound up in the river. Some days she just sat on the deck and dreamed.
    In her mind was a confused jumble of impressions—willow trees and sand bars, wooded islands and towheads, snakes, turtles and fish, water birds in the shallows and land birds in the cottonwoods, pile dikes, asphalt banks and cave-ins, buoys and river lights and day marks. Once when they stopped she saw the bright eyes of a raccoon looking down from the branch of an overhanging tree, but Daddy would not let her get it for a pet.
    It was hard to remember the days of the week, or what town they had been in or passed by. It was hard to remember where particular events had taken place. One day passed and another came. The Foster family kept going without seeming intent or purpose, just to keep going. Sometimes Patsy wondered if they would ever stop and if she would ever live in a house again.
    Now she saw the people on the river banks with a fresh eye. She would see children stopping their play and staring as the houseboat went by. She would see a mother hanging the wash out on a line, but the line was tied to a little house with roses blooming over the doorway and not to a houseboat. She would see the cars moving along the road with people riding in them, and now and then a train with people looking out the windows.
    She felt sorry-for the land people now. They did not know what they were missing when they stayed in one place all the time. She pitied the children because they had only a yard or a few streets to play in, instead of a great river that went on and on even to the ocean. She knew they had stores and