Free Stuart Little by E. B. White, Garth Williams

would be able to lean back
and trail her fingers in the water if she wished. He also made a pillow by
tying one of his clean handkerchiefs around some moss. Then he went for a paddle
to practise his stroke. He was angry that he didn’t have anything better than a
paper spoon for a paddle, but he decided that there was nothing he could do
about it. He wondered whether Harriet would notice that his paddle was really
just an ice cream spoon.
    All that afternoon Stuart
worked on the canoe, adjusting ballast, filling seams, and getting everything
shipshape for the morrow. He could think of nothing else but his date with
Harriet. At suppertime he took his ax, felled a dandelion, opened a can of
deviled ham, and had a light supper of ham and dandelion milk. After supper, he
propped himself up against a fern, bit off some spruce gum for a chew, and lay
there on the bank dreaming and chewing gum. In his imagination he went over
every detail of tomorrow’s trip with Harriet. With his eyes shut he seemed to
see the whole occasion plainly—how she would look when she came down the path
to the water, how calm and peaceful the river was going to be in the twilight,
how graceful the canoe would seem, drawn up on the shore. In imagination he
lived every minute of their evening together.
    They would paddle to a large
water-lily pad upstream, and he would invite Harriet to step out on the pad and
sit awhile. Stuart planned to wear his swimming trunks under his clothes so
that he could dive off the lily pad into the cool stream. He would swim the
crawl stroke, up and down and all around the lily pad, while Harriet watched,
admiring his ability as a swimmer. (stuart chewed the spruce gum very rapidly
as he thought about this part of the episode.)
    Suddenly Stuart opened his
eyes and sat up. He thought about the letter he had sent and he wondered whether
it had ever been delivered. It was an unusually small letter, of course, and
might have gone unnoticed in the letterbox. This idea filled him with fears and
worries. But soon he let his thoughts return to the river, and as he lay there
a whippoorwill began to sing on the opposite shore, darkness spread over the
land, and Stuart dropped off to sleep.
    The next day dawned cloudy.
Stuart had to go up to the village to have the oil changed in his car, so he
hid the canoe under some leaves, tied it firmly to a stone, and went off on his
errand, still thinking about Harriet and wishing it were a nicer day. The sky
looked rainy.
    Stuart returned from the
village with a headache, but he hoped that it would be better before five o’clock.
    He felt rather nervous, as he
had never taken a girl canoeing before. He spent the afternoon lying around camp,
trying on different shirts to see which looked best on him and combing his
whiskers. He would no sooner get a clean shirt on than he would discover that
it was wet under the arms, from nervous perspiration, and he would have to
change it for a dry one. He put on a clean shirt at two o’clock, another at three o’clock, and another at quarter past four. This took up most of the
afternoon. As five o’clock drew near, Stuart grew more and more nervous. He
kept looking at his watch, glancing up the path, combing his hair, talking to
himself, and fidgeting. The day had turned chilly
    and Stuart was almost sure
that there was going to be rain.He couldn’t imagine what he would do if it
should rain just as Harriet Ames showed up to go canoeing.
    At last five o’clock arrived. Stuart heard someone coming down the path. It was Harriet. She had accepted his
invitation. Stuart threw himself down against a stump and tried to strike an
easy attitude, as though he were accustomed to taking girls out. He waited till
Harriet was within a few feet of him, then got up.
    “Hello there,” he said,
trying to keep his voice from trembling.
    “Are you Mr. Little?” asked
Harriet.
    “Yes,” said Stuart. “It’s
nice of you
    to come.”
    “Well, it was very good