The shadows had begun to grow long when the merry company of young people went up river with the tide, and Nan thought she had seldom known such a pleasure away from her own home.  She begged for the oars, and kept stroke with George Gerry, pulling so well that they quickly passed the other boat.  Mary Parish and the friend who made the fourth of that division of the party sat in the stern and steered with fine dexterity, and the two boats kept near each other, so that Nan soon lost all feeling of strangeness, and shared in the good comradeship to which she had been willingly admitted.  It was some time since she had been on the water before, and she thought more than once of her paddling about the river in her childhood, and even regaled the company once with a most amusing mishap, at the remembrance of which she had been forced to laugh outright.  The river was broad and brimful of water; it seemed high tide already, and the boats pulled easily.  The fields sloped down to the river-banks, shaded with elms and parted by hedgerows like a bit of English country.  The freshest bloom of the June greenness was in every blade of grass and every leaf.  The birds were beginning to sing the long day to a close, and the lowing of cattle echoed from the pastures again and again across the water; while the country boats were going home from the town, sometimes with a crew of women, who seemed to have made this their regular conveyance instead of following the more roundabout highways ashore.  Some of these navigators rowed with a cross-handed stroke that jerked their boats along in a droll fashion, and some were propelled by one groping oar, the sculler standing at the stern as if he were trying to push his craft out of water altogether and take to the air, toward which the lifted bow pointed.  And in one of the river reaches half a mile ahead, two heavy packet boats, with high-peaked lateen sails, like a great bird’s single wing, were making all the speed they could toward port before the tide should begin to fall two hours later.  The young guest of the party was very happy; she had spent so many of her childish days out of doors that a return to such pleasures always filled her with strange delight.  The color was bright in her cheeks, and her half-forgotten girlishness came back in the place of the gravity and dignity that had brought of late a sedate young womanliness to her manner.  The two new friends in the stern of the boat were greatly attracted to her, and merry laughter rang out now and then.  Nan was so brave and handsome, so willing to be pleased, and so grateful to them for this little festivity, that they quickly became interested in each other, as girls will.  The commander thought himself a fortunate fellow, and took every chance of turning his head to catch a glimpse of our heroine, though he always had a good excuse of taking his bearings or inspecting for himself some object afloat or ashore which one of the boat’s company had pointed out.  And Nan must be told the names of the distant hills which stood out clear in the afternoon light, and to what towns up river the packet boats were bound, and so the time seemed short before the light dory was run in among the coarse river grass and pulled up higher than seemed necessary upon the shore.