After she had eaten, for some reason Missy felt a craving to wander off somewhere and sit still a while. She would have loved to stretch out in the grass, and half-close her eyes, and gaze up at the bits of shining, infinite blue of the sky, and dream. But there was Raymond at her elbow—and she wanted, even more than she wanted to be alone and dream, Raymond to be there at her elbow.
Then, too, there were all the others. Someone shouted:
“What'll we do now? What'll we do, Missy?”
So the class president dutifully set her wits to work. Around the flat white stones of the ford the water was dribbling, warm, soft, enticing.
“Let's go wading!” she cried.
Wading!
Usually Missy would have shrunk from appearing before boys in bare feet. But this was a special kind of day which held no room for embarrassment; and, more quickly than it takes to tell it, shoes and stockings were off and the new game was on. Missy stood on a stepping-stone, suddenly diffident; the water now looked colder and deeper, the whispering cascadelets seemed to roar like breakers on a beach. The girls were all letting out little squeals as the water chilled their ankles, and the boys made feints of chasing them into deeper water.
Raymond pursued Missy, squealing and skipping from stone to stone till, unexpectedly, she lost her slippery footing and went sprawling into the shallow stream.
“Oh, Missy! I'm sorry!” She felt his arms tugging at her. Then she found herself standing on the bank, red-faced and dripping, feeling very wretched and very happy at the same time—wretched because Raymond should see her in such plight; happy because he was making such a fuss over her notwithstanding.
He didn't seem to mind her appearance, but took his hat and began energetically to fan her draggled hair.