Courage by Ruth Ogden — Read

Strange as it still may appear to you that a little girl should have Courage for her name, yet, true it is, that she was no sooner named herself than she had a namesake. It was none of your little baby namesakes either, but a stanch and well-built boat, and one that was generally admitted to be the finest craft of her class in the harbor. The Courage Masterson was what is commonly known as a lighter, and to whom of course did she belong but to Larry Starr, Hugh Masterson's best friend; but she was no common lighter, I can assure you. Larry had given his whole mind to her building, and it was unlike any of the other lighters that make their way up and down the river or out on the bay, with their great cumbersome loads. She had a fine little cabin of her own, a cosey, comfortable cabin, with two state-rooms, if you can give them so fine a title, opening out of it, and a tiny kitchen beyond, lighted by a small sky-window. All this, as any one knows, was very luxurious, but Larry had put the savings of many years into that boat, and he meant to have it as he liked it. To be sure, the cabin, occupying as it did some twenty square feet, greatly lessened her carrying capacity, for one square foot on the deck of a lighter stands for innumerable square feet of merchandise, which may be piled to almost any height upon it.

Larry was quite willing, however, to lose something from the profits of every trip for the sake of the added comfort. But it was six years now since the lighter had been launched, and so it had happened that all that time, while the little girl Courage had been having a variety of experiences on land, the big boat Courage had been sailing under "fair skies and foul" on the water, and safely transporting many a cargo that netted a comfortable living for Larry. And now Saturday afternoon had come, and Courage was down in her old place at the dock's end with a happy certainty in her eyes, and yet with a sorrowful look overshadowing it, for there was such sad news to be told when at last Larry should come, and at last he came.