“Why, Mr. Odd! Upon my word!”—the Captain recognized his neighbor—“I don’t know how to thank you.”
The Captain had not recovered from his astonishment, and repeated with some vehemence: “Upon my word!”
“Well, papa, you nearly drowned me!” Katherine was struggling between pride and anger. She would not let the tears come, but they were near the surface. “Those horrible snaky things got hold of me and I almost screamed, only I remembered that I mustn’t open my mouth, and I thought I would never come to the top.” The self-pitying retrospect brought the tears to her eyes, but she held up her head and looked and spoke her resentment, “I think you might have gone in first yourself. And Hilda! Why didn’t you wait until I came to the surface before you made her do it?”
Captain Archinard looked more vague under these reproaches than one would have expected after his exhibition of rather fretful autocracy.
“Made her!” he repeated, seizing with a rather mean haste at the error; “made her? She went in herself! Like a rocket, after you. By Jove! she showed her blood after all.”
“Hilda! you tried to save my life!”
Odd still held the younger girl on his arm, supporting her while she choked and panted, for she had evidently had not shown her sister’s aplomb and had opened her mouth. Katherine took her into her arms and kissed her with a warmth quite dramatic.
“Darling Hilda! And you were so frightened, too. I would have gone in after her,” she added, looking up at Odd with a bright, quick glance, “but there would have been nothing to my credit in that.”
“And I would have gone in after her, it goes without saying, Mr. Odd,” said the Captain, when Katherine had led away to the bathing-cabin her still dazed sister, “but you seemed to drop from the clouds. Really, you have put me under a great obligation.”
“Not at all. I have spent most of the day in the river. I merely went in a bit deeper to fish out that plucky little girl.”