“When do we get to Buffalo?” asked Katy, with an uneasy recollection of having heard that canal boats travel slowly.

“Buffalo?  Let me see.  This is Tuesday,—­Wednesday, Thursday,—­well, if we’re lucky we ought to be there Friday evening; so, if we’re not too late to catch the night boat on the lake, you’ll reach home Saturday afternoon.”

Four days!  The girls looked at each other with dismay too deep for words.  Elsie was expecting them by Thursday at latest.  What should they do?

“Telegraph,” was the only answer that suggested itself.  So Katy scribbled a despatch, “Coming by canal.  Don’t expect us till Saturday,” which she begged Mr. Peters to send; and she and Clover agreed in whispers that it was dreadful, but they must bear it as patiently as they could.

Oh, the patience which is needed on a canal!  The motion which is not so much motion as standing still!  The crazy impulse to jump out and help the crawling boat along by pushing it from behind!  How one grows to hate the slow, monotonous glide, the dull banks, and to envy every swift-moving thing in sight, each man on horseback, each bird flying through the air.

Mrs. Peters was a thin, anxious woman, who spent her life anticipating disasters of all sorts.  She had her children with her, three little boys, and a teething baby; and such a load of bundles, and baskets, and brown paper parcels, that Katy and Clover privately wondered how she could possibly have got through the journey without their help.  Willy, the eldest boy, was always begging leave to go ashore and ride the towing horses; Sammy, the second could only be kept quiet by means of crooked pins and fish-lines of blue yarn; while Paul, the youngest, was possessed with a curiosity as to the under side of the boat, which resulted in his dropping his new hat overboard five times in three days, Mr. Peters and the cabin-boy rowing back in a small boat each time to recover it.  Mrs. Peters sat on deck with her baby in her lap, and was in a perpetual agony lest the locks should work wrongly, or the boys be drowned, or some one fail to notice the warning cry, “Bridge!” and have their heads carried off from their shoulders.  Nobody did; but the poor lady suffered the anguish of ten accidents in dreading the one which never took place.  The berths at night were small and cramped, restless children woke and cried, the cabins were close, the decks cold and windy.  There was nothing to see, and nothing to do.  Katy and Clover agreed that they never wanted to see a canal boat again.

They were very helpful to Mrs. Peters, amused the boys, and kept them out of mischief; and she told her husband that she really thought she shouldn’t have lived through the journey if it hadn’t been for the Miss Carrs, they were such kind girls, and so fond of children.  But the three days were terribly long.  At last they ended.  Buffalo was reached in time for the lake boat; and once established on board, feeling the rapid motion, and knowing that each stroke of the paddles took them nearer home, the girls were rewarded for their long trial of patience.