"And if a few of us had drowned while he was doing it—" Kitty began ironically.
"You'd have missed being in the picture, poor souls! Well, since we're all alive, let's go break the news gently to the grown-ups." Blue Bonnet looked around the drenched, shivering group and then burst into peals of laughter.
In truth they were a sorry looking lot. Soaked to the skin, with hair and clothes dripping and bedraggled, they all looked at each other as if surprised and grieved to find themselves part of so undignified a company.
Grandmother's expression when the We are Sevens hove into sight, sent Blue Bonnet off into another gale of merriment.
"We've been shooting the chutes, Grandmother," she said with dancing eyes.
"Without a boat," added Kitty.
It took Sarah to tell the story in all its harrowing details, and at its conclusion Mrs. Clyde looked sober.
"Were you really in danger?" she asked Blue Bonnet.
"Not a bit," Blue Bonnet declared. "Sarah was the only one who came near drowning and that was because she would talk under water."
Fifteen minutes later the little sheet-iron stove was red-hot, and on a hastily strung clothes-line about it hung an array of dripping garments that almost hid it from view.