It was her turn to be made a heroine, but somehow she felt less ready to claim her rights than she would have thought possible on that occasion when Winnie was so praised. “I am sorry, Miss Dodge,” she said, as the girls flocked around her, “but I went outside of bounds; I just had to, for it didn’t seem to me there was any other way, and every minute counted.”
“It was certainly an emergency,” Miss Dodge replied, “and you are quite excusable, although we were all worried that you should be gone so long, until we heard what had happened.”
“Who told you?”
“Unc’ Aaron came over to say that the woods were on fire and that you had given the alarm. He had some marvellous tale of how you rode Chico down a sheer precipice, and that it was a wonder you didn’t fall headlong. How was it, Joanne?”
Joanne glanced around at the eagerly listening girls. “It was entirely due to that darling, sure-footed Chico,” she said. “I knew he was a mountain pony and could go where ordinary horses would be scared, so I just put him at it and he picked his way without even once stumbling.”
Miss Dodge shook her head. “Pretty venturesome. Weren’t you afraid, Joanne?”
“A little, at first, but I was so anxious to get to the foot of the cliff and meet the boys that I didn’t think of anything else; besides I was excited, and you do things when you are excited that you wouldn’t dare to do in cold blood.”
“Just where was the place?” asked Miss Chesney.
“That cliffy one opposite Longshanks Island. I rode to the top and signalled to the boys.”
“You signalled? What with?” asked Miss Dodge.