"Like!" The girls hardly knew how to express their gratitude.
"The three of you'd be too heavy a load. I think I'd better take just one at a time. Can you manage to get in? It's rather swampy here. Give me your hand!"
Ingred splashed ankle deep in oozy mud as she scrambled on board, but that was a trifle compared with the relief of being ferried over the river. Her knight-errant was neither young nor handsome, being, indeed, rather bald and stout, but no orthodox interesting hero of fiction could have been more welcome at the moment. She tendered her utmost thanks as she landed, again with damage to her shoes, on the rushy bank opposite. Their friends in need, having successfully punted over Beatrice and Verity also, bade them a laughing good-bye, and resumed their easy course down stream, leaving three very grateful girls behind them.
[Illustration: A FRIEND IN NEED]
"That's helped us out of a fix! Don't say again we've no luck!" cried Beatrice, wiping her boots carefully on the grass.
"They were angels in disguise!" sighed Ingred.
"Rather stout angels!" chuckled Verity. "Now, how are we going to get out of this field?"
"Over the hedge, I suppose. There's a piece of fence that looks climbable!" returned Beatrice, swinging herself up with elephantine grace, and dropping with a heavy thud on the other side. "Oh! good biz! We're on a cinder path!"
They were indeed in a back lane which led at the bottom of some gardens, then behind a row of stables, and finally through a gate on to the high road.