She took it to school in her pocket, learning the whole way as she went, and taking a roundabout road that her cousins might not interrupt her.

She kept repeating and peeping every possible moment during school hours, and then all the way home again.

So that by the time she had had her dinner, and the gauzy twilight had thickened to the "blanket of the dark," she felt quite ready to carry her offering of "the song that lightens toil," to George Macwha's workshop.
How clever they must be, she thought, as she went along, to make such a beautiful thing as the boat was now growing to! And she felt in her heart a kind of love for the look of living grace that the little craft already wore.

Indeed before it was finished she had learned to regard it with a feeling of mingled awe, affection, and admiration, and the little boat had made for itself a place in her brain.
When she entered, she found the two boys already in busy talk; and without interrupting them by a word, she took her place on the heap of shavings which had remained undisturbed since last night.

After the immediate consultation was over, and the young carpenters had settled to their work--not knowing what introduction to give to her offering, she produced it without any at all.