"I will," she answered indomitably.
She mounted, rode for a hundred yards, and fell again.
"That slippery sand!" she said petulantly. "What shall we do, Hu? We must ride, and I can't find the path."
"You're rattled, dear; and I can't ride, myself, any too well. Follow me."
How patient he was! Even in her anxiety and alarm, Theodora realized all the kindly care he gave her, all the generosity with which he tried to prevent her feeling herself a drag upon his freedom. She was quite unconscious that she had earned his patience by showing the one quality which boys too rarely find in their girl companions, the lack of which leads them to take their out-of-door pleasures alone. Theodora rarely grumbled; in a real emergency, she never complained.
It had seemed to the girl that all fun had died out of the universe, that the mental outlook was as black as the physical one. Ten minutes later, the woods echoed with shrieks of laughter,—laughter so infectious that Hubert laughed in sympathy, without in the least knowing the cause. The sounds came from some distance back of him. He dismounted and ran along the road, unable to see his sister, and guided only by her voice, which appeared to proceed from a bed of tall weeds by the wayside.
"I'm here, Hu," she gasped.
"Where in thunder?" He parted the weeds at the edge of the road and peered in. There on her back lay Theodora, with her bicycle on top of her.
"I lost my pedals and couldn't stop till I ran into these weeds," she explained hysterically. "It was just as soft as a bed, and I went down, down, down, and landed in about six inches of water. Pull me out, Hu. I'm drowned."
With the help of his hand, she struggled out and stood beside him in the road, with the water dripping from her short skirt. Just then, the clouds parted, and the moon, slanting down through the trees, fell upon her bedraggled figure. The brother and sister looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then they burst into a shout of laughter. It was the best tonic they could have had, and Theodora's courage rose even as she laughed.