“There, under the bridge,” cried a lad, pointing.
It was an awkward spot; he plunged and dived once, without success. But the second time the little petticoats bubbled up before his eyes: he seized them and scrambled up the bank with her, a little, inert mass under his arm.
Mrs. Goodenough and the girl who was a stranger, had come running up, and other neighbours followed.
“’Ot blankets and ’ot water to ’er feet,” said one; “and a drop o’ spirit in ’er inside be the thing,” suggested another; and a third, more practical, ran up the steep bank towards the village, saying she would fetch the doctor and get things ready in the cottage agin’ Mr. Wycombe carried her up.
He had thrown himself upon the little body, breathing into it with all his might, though with little knowledge of how to effect restoration.
But luckily the little one had been in the water but a moment, and she was strong and lusty. In a few minutes she began to stir, then to open her eyes, and then to cry, and at that the man seized her in his arms and pressed her to his warm heart, and, waving the curious and sympathizing little crowd aside, leapt to his feet and strode up the hill with her on his neck.
It was late. The afterglow had died away, leaving no more than a warm memory in the softer blue of the night sky, and a subtle sense of colour that had been, in the fast darkening marsh-land where faint vapours and floating mists were rising upon the dykes.
The doctor had been and gone, the neighbours had been cleared out ruthlessly, and Tom Wycombe sat content once more beside the calmly sleeping child. Her pretty rings of soft brown hair lay curling over the white pillow, or creeping against her rich little sunburnt face, where even now the fresh red colour glowed so warm and healthfully. Ruddy lips were parted by a gentle breathing, and heavy lids with long lashes veiled eyes that even Tom Wycombe, who was no poet, could have told were blue in the waking as the blue sea beyond the green marsh-land.
Every one said that Daisy was the prettiest child in the village as her mother had been its handsomest woman, in her different style.
Well enough had Tom Wycombe been aware of this latter fact, and surprised enough, too, that Milly Moss had agreed to take him for a mate—older than she and plain as he was—when there were so many lads sighing around her. Twice he had asked and twice had been refused, but the third time she had consented, and he had asked himself no questions of why or wherefore, but had simply rejoiced in his luck. And she had been a good wife: a bit quiet—as, indeed, she had always been with him, even before marriage—but always dutiful, and he loved her as the working man is not always inspired to love his wife, and did all in his power to make up to her for the one disappointment of those happy years of wedded life—the disappointment of childlessness.