He did not argue or hesitate, but decided for the most expeditious way ashore. That is, he gathered her up in his arms as easily as if she had weighed thirty pounds instead of nearly one hundred and thirty—making no account of the hundred pounds or so of water she was carrying in her garments. As she had predicted, Hector distanced his taller and heavier companion and arrived well in advance of him. When he came panting to within a hundred yards or so of where she was wringing out her skirts Roger sung out, loudly enough for his voice to reach the ears of the still distant other youth: “Hello, Heck. She’s all right.”
“Heck” stopped short in astonishment. Then he came on, but at a slower gait. “Who are you?” he said to Roger.
Rix looked up from her clothes-wringing. “Call him Chang,” she said tranquilly to her brother. “Hank mustn’t know.”
“What the dev—” began Heck.
“Shut up, Heck,” Beatrice ordered in the tone members of the same family do not hesitate to use to one another in moments of extreme provocation. “Don’t try to think. You know you can’t. You’ve certainly got sense enough to see that Hank must be made to believe that Chang and you are old friends.” She added in a still lower tone: “Drop that hit-on-the-head look. He’s not ten seconds away.”
Hector had barely time for an indifferently successful but passable rearrangement of his expression when up dashed Hank, puffing, all solicitude. “You’re not hurt very much, dear—are you?” he panted. “Might know—Heck’s such an awful fool.”
“Mr. Chang, Mr. Vanderkief,” interrupted Beatrice.
Vanderkief, big and heavy, red and breathless, mechanically bowed. The effort of that conventional gesture seemed suddenly to recall to him the state of mind suspended by the catastrophe. He gave the big artist a second and longer and unpleasantly sharp stare. Roger returned it with polite affability of eye. “We must build a fire,” said be, “and dry this young lady. Come on, Heck.” The way “Heck” winced seemed to delight him—and Beatrice and he exchanged one of those furtive looks of sympathetic enjoyment of a secret joke that proclaim a high degree of intimacy and understanding. Said Roger to the stiff and uneasy “Hank”: “Will you help, Mr. Vandersniff?”
“Mr. Vanderkief,” corrected Beatrice. “While you three are building the fire I’ll retire into the bushes and squeeze out all I can of the lake.”
Not without making Hank’s eyes glint jealously and her brother’s eyes angrily, but without either’s overhearing, she contrived to say to Roger, “You’ll help me out, won’t you?”