CHAPTER XXI.
A DISASTROUS VISIT TO A FROG POND.
But before that day is out Honor finds that there are likely to be more troubles before her than the want of new boots. For Daisy, who has been trusted to the care of Dick and Bobby for a long walk in the fields, comes home with flushed little cheeks, cold feet and hot hands, and while declining in her quiet, determined way to touch a morsel of anything to eat, begs, almost with tears in her eyes, for cup after cup of tea.
"The child looks really ill," says Mrs. Merivale anxiously. "I can't think what can have made her feverish so suddenly."
"What have you been doing with her?" demands Molly of her two brothers as she cuts bread with an energy almost terrible to behold.
Bobby mutters something unintelligible about "frogs," his mouth being full of bread-and-butter at the moment. But at length, after a cross-examination of both boys, it turns out that Daisy, who is a lover of anything in the way of an animal from caterpillars upwards, has been standing for a good half hour and more on the wet, marshy banks of a large pond, admiring the frogs with which it abounds.
"I suppose the time passed quicker than we thought," Says Dick apologetically. "It was such fun, you know; for some of them came quite close to us. I had a job to keep Daisy from going right into the shallow water after one old fellow, who was sitting up on a kind of plank."
"He was washing his face," explains Daisy in a husky little voice.
"He wasn't," says Bobby; "he was scratching his ear!"
"I don't believe they've got any ears to scratch," remarks Dick placidly. "You'd better pile it on, young Bob, and say he was wiping his eyes with a fine cambric handkerchief."
"You should have been more careful, Dick," puts in Mrs. Merivale. "You know how susceptible Daisy is to cold; and I'm sure we thought you might be trusted with her."