One day as the Dorrance girls sat on the veranda, Celestine came running to them, wringing her hands, after her French method of showing great dismay, and exclaiming:
"Mees Sylvie,—she have fallen into ze lake!"
"What!" exclaimed the three girls at once, jumping up, and running towards the lake; "where did she fall in? How did it happen?"
"Non, non,—not zat way! zis a-way," and Celestine started down a path that did not lead towards the lake. "I have pull her out; she is not drown,—but she is,—oh, so ver' soil,—so, vat you say,—muddy, oh, so much muddy!"
"Never mind the mud if the child isn't drowned," cried Lilian; "but this is not the way to the lake. You said she fell in the lake."
"Not ze gran' lake, mees, but ze small lake,—ze ver' small, p'tit lake."
"Oh, she means nothing but a mud-puddle!" cried Fairy, who had run ahead of the rest, and found Sylvia lying on the grass, chuckling with laughter, while her pretty clothes were a mass of mud and wet.
"I falled in!" she cried, gleefully; "I failed in all myself, when C'lestine wasn't looking. Ain't I a funny dirl?"
"No, I don't think it's funny," began Dorothy, and then she paused, realizing that it was not her duty to reprimand Mrs. Black's children, and, too, Sylvia certainly did look funny. Not only her white dress, but her face and hands, and her dainty white slippers and stockings were bespattered with brown mud, and Lilian said that she looked like a chocolate éclair.
Another day, Celestine approached Dorothy with the pleasing news that, "Master Montmorency, he must have upsetted the blanc-mange."