"I'm all right. I've got them quite firmly. Now I'm going to give one good tug and a shake to get rid of the stones and then I expect it will come."
"Shall I hold your dress?" asked Linda, looking on with a shiver of apprehension.
"No, don't touch me! There, I can feel the stones go. It's coming! It's coming!"
And so it was, but far more suddenly than Sylvia had calculated; the unexpected jerk completely overbalanced her, and before she had time even to clutch at one of the rhododendron boughs she had fallen together with the barrow into the pool. Luckily it was not deep, and she was in no danger of drowning, but the mud was thick and black at the bottom, and as she scrambled hastily out she looked as if she had been dipped into an inkpot.
"Oh! Sylvia!" cried Linda, "What are we to do? We can't possibly help everyone finding out now. What a frightful mess you're in!"
"So I am," said Sylvia, looking ruefully at her spoilt clothes, and trying to wipe off some of the mud with her hands. "I didn't get the barrow up either."
"Oh, never mind the barrow; we can't stop for it now! There's the dressing bell. We shall have to go and tell somebody. You're simply streaming with mud, and we shall both be late for dinner."
Feeling very guilty, the pair crept out from under the bush and tried to dash across towards the side door, on the chance that Sylvia might be able to reach the bathroom and remove at least some of the traces of her dipping before anyone caught her. It was a vain hope, for in turning the corner they ran almost into the arms of Miss Coleman, who had come out to look for a missing member of her small flock.
"Sylvia Lindsay," she cried in horror, "you naughty child! Where have you been? And what have you done to yourself?"
"I don't know," replied Sylvia, dissolving into tears, which made white trickles down her dirty cheeks like little rivers on a map; "I fell in somewhere, and it was all mud, and it's cold, and please may I go in and change my things?"